Good Counsel High School to close

The Academy of Our Lady of Good Counsel High School in White Plains will close in July at the conclusion of the current school year.

Students, parents and faculty were notified of the closing Thursday afternoon via a letter sent by the Sisters of the Divine Compassion, the religious order that operates the school.

The motherhouse at the Good Counsel campus in White Plains.

“After more than a year of due diligence, a suitable and affordable relocation site for Good Counsel Academy High School has not been found,” the letter said. The Sisters of the Divine Compassion had been looking for a new location following their decision to put the 16-acre campus, at 52 N. Broadway, up for sale. The order has been located there for 125 years.

Geoff Thompson, a spokesman for the order, told the Business Journal in November the combination of the congregation”™s nuns aging and fewer young women joining the order have put the congregation in economic peril. After examining potential solutions over the past 15 years, the sisters decided to sell the property, which includes an elementary school in addition to the high school, Thompson said.

“All of the properties owned by the sisters were thoroughly evaluated,” Thompson said in November. “The property that is the most costly to operate and holds the most value is the Good Counsel campus, and that”™s why it is on the market.”

According to a letter from Cardinal Timothy Dolan, archbishop of New York, the archdiocese helped the Good Counsel trustees search for a vacant Catholic school building to relocate the high school but were unsuccessful. Dolan”™s letter said one school, in New Rochelle, was ruled out after it was determined costly renovations would be necessary.

“As recently as December 2013, the archdiocese also attempted to negotiate a building lease for Our Lady of Good Counsel Academy in another part of Westchester County,” Dolan wrote. “At this point, the archdiocese has done all that has been asked to assist this private school in remaining open.”

The Good Counsel elementary school, which offers pre-K through eighth grade, was able to find a new home.  In September, it will open 2 miles north of the White Plains campus at the former Holy Name of Jesus elementary school in Valhalla.

Commercial real estate firm CBRE Group Inc. has the exclusive listing of the Good Counsel campus, which is  next to Pace Law School. Reached by phone, Bill Cuddy, an executive vice president at CBRE, declined to comment on any bids that have been made on the property, citing the need for confidentiality on both sides of the transaction.