In 2009, when the Lansing-based school opened an Ann Arbor branch, almost 88,000 students applied to American law schools. Cooley president Don LeDuc smelled opportunity: he told the Observer he planned to enroll “the U-M undergraduate who wants to go to law school, can’t get into U-M law school, and wants to stay in Ann Arbor.”

But as outsourcing and the Internet erode opportunities for entry-level lawyers, so has the willingness to borrow $100,000 or more to get a law degree: this year, barely 50,000 students applied, the lowest number in fifteen years.

Selective schools maintained enrollment by offering more scholarships and accepting less-qualified students. Proudly non-selective Cooley had nowhere to go but down. According to the Lansing State Journal, its enrollment plunged more than 50 percent between 2010 and 2014.

In August last year, Cooley announced an affiliation agreement with Western Michigan University. (It also has campuses in Auburn Hills and Tampa.) In December, it closed its Ann Arbor branch and put the building up for sale. The asking price: $13 million.

The 86,492-square-foot building on almost ten acres has stood vacant ever since. Built in 1960, it previously housed the National Sanitation Foundation and Tom Monaghan’s Ave Maria law school. (NSF International built a new headquarters on Dixboro Rd., and Monaghan moved Ave Maria to Florida.) But for local color, it’s hard to beat its first owner, driven scientist-entrepreneur Kip Siegel.

Siegel hired Midland modern architect Alden Dow to design it as the headquarters for his company, Conductron Corporation. The company developed radar for aerial reconnaissance. In a previous Observer story, a former employee recalled that if a “test plane flying overhead hit the wrong frequency, the switchboard would light up with calls from irate neighbors whose garage-door openers had just been activated.”

Siegel sold Conductron to aircraft maker McDonnell-Douglas, which added an adjoining factory in an ill-fated attempt to manufacture color televisions. Siegel moved on to start KMS Industries, a briefly high-flying conglomerate that went broke trying to commercialize thermonuclear energy. Seeking federal money to continue, Siegel suffered a fatal cerebral hemorrhage while testifying before the congressional Joint Committee on Atomic Energy. Forty years later, his dream of abundant, nonpolluting fusion energy remains unfulfilled.

Colliers International listing agent Mike Bennett says the building’s past is reflected in now-empty classrooms and glass-walled spaces where scientists once did research. Until recently, a rendering of a rejected Alden Dow proposal for the building hung on a wall; Bennett says visitors often found it startling, because it “looks like a spaceship.”

In mid-October, Bennett said the building was under contract. Though he wasn’t able to identify the buyer, he’d earlier predicted that any purchaser is likely to make major renovations. Tenants today, he says, want fewer offices, more open work spaces, and good, natural lighting.

Still, he notes cheerfully, “it’s definitely easier to take stuff down than to build [a new] office.”