Tabi Walters
There were at least two reasons why U-M’s $60 million deal to buy Concordia University’s Geddes Rd. campus rankled city hall.
The first, as expressed in a city council resolution passed just days before U-M regents finalized the 140-acre deal, was that it would close off a potential opportunity to develop housing and create new revenue. Ann Arbor leaders had envisioned the riverfront campus, long exempt from property taxes because of its educational use, being added to the tax rolls under a new owner.
The second: the sale was a total surprise. “The city had been in contact with Concordia for at least a year now to express interest in purchasing the property directly,” says councilmember Jon Mallek, who represents Ward 2 where the campus lies. “They kind of signaled that they were either not interested or they were not ready to discuss it.”
Neither U-M nor Concordia’s owners, the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod, has discussed how the deal came together or how they arrived at the $60 million purchase price, which some critics see as strikingly small for such prime real estate. Concordia’s announcement says: “We are encouraged that the property will continue to be used for educational purposes.”
The purchase drew fury from some officials. State rep Jason Morgan, Mallek’s husband, warned U-M in a pointed Facebook post that “it is becoming harder to defend this institution against state cuts when it is willing to spend enormous sums expanding its footprint against the wishes of the communities it operates in.” But some socials posters suggested they trusted U-M more than the development-minded city government to preserve the land.
Related: Selling Concordia (Jan. 2025)
A University Record article notes that U-M bought the property that would become North Campus in 1949 without knowing it would someday need a state-of-the-art robotics lab. “When we buy property, we think about it in 100-year increments,” says U-M regent Sarah Hubbard. “We may not know exactly what we want to do with it right now, but I know we’ll come up with a really great use that’ll help the community and help the university into its future.”
Hubbard says U-M will preserve public access to parks and the river and likely make the athletic facilities available to K–12 schools and other groups. There are no plans to tear down any buildings, including the beloved Chapel of the Holy Trinity, she says, and it won’t become home to a data center. “That is certainly not on my radar screen. I mean, it’s beautiful riverfront property. We’ll find something that is very fitting for the location.”
That comes as a relief to Mallek, who sounded more conciliatory weeks after the sale. “I’m sure the university might come up with fantastic plans for the campus,” he says. “But if they could do that in partnership with the city and offer some of these big benefits to the city, that would be great.”