RPI INVESTS IN RETREAT THAT’S FIT FOR A PRESIDENT (Albany Times Union – August 4, 2004)

Section: CAPITAL REGION
Page: B1
Date: Wednesday, August 4, 2004

RPI INVESTS IN RETREAT THAT’S FIT FOR A PRESIDENT
Fort Ann Officials insist Adirondack site for staff use, but some say it’s a home for Shirley Ann Jackson

KENNETH AARON Staff writer

Towering trees. Mountains as far as the eye can see. The southern tip of Lake Champlain peeking out from a promontory in the distance.

Is this the view from the new home Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute has bought for President Shirley Ann Jackson?

RPI officials insist that the 36-acre Adirondack site they purchased in November for $450,000 with the aid of a gift is to be used as a retreat and conference center for faculty and staff. But the former owner, Carol Grimes, said Tuesday that lawyers representing RPI told her the three-bedroom, hand-hewn cabin with the staggering view was to be Jackson’s personal residence.

“They told me that, no, it was not going to be a retreat,” she said Tuesday.

RPI spokeswoman Theresa Bourgeois said she did not know the reason for the discrepancy. But she said the gift was given with the expressed purpose of buying Grimes’ land and using it for retreat and conference purposes. She would not disclose the amount of the gift, nor who gave it, as per school policy, but said the donor specified it be used for the purchase, renovation and operation of the site.

Grimes said she didn’t know who was behind the donation.

The home was on the market for three years when RPI made an anonymous offer to buy it, Grimes said. Not until shortly before the closing did RPI identify itself.  The original asking price was near $1.4 million, but a bad roof and other problems pushed the cost down.

Sharon Davies, the real estate agent who listed the property, said she wasn’t sure what RPI had in mind for the site — perhaps a home, perhaps a retreat, perhaps both. But Jackson was involved in redecorating the place, she said. “I did have a feeling she was going to spend a lot of time there,” said Davies, co-owner of Owen-Davies & Associates, a Cleverdale firm.

Jackson was the nation’s highest-paid college president during the 2002 fiscal year, when she made $891,400 in salary and benefits. More recent figures aren’t available yet.

The site, which is on a dirt road across from a Boy Scout reservation, was last assessed at $289,600.

Several colleges have Adirondack property. The University at Albany’s Student Association owns Camp Dippikill, an 850-acre site in Warrensburg that is used mainly by students and alumni.

Other schools with Adirondack getaways include Syracuse University, which owns the Minnowbrook Conference Center in Blue Mountain Lake, and the State University College at Cortland, which has an educational center on Raquette Lake.

RPI’s cabin, set back several hundred feet from the road, is in the midst of renovations and will be ready for use later this year or next.

Officials have yet to decide the exact nature of the retreats and conferences to be held there, Bourgeois said. With only three bedrooms, not many could stay overnight, although Grimes said she has entertained as many as 30 at the cabin.

“It’s a little piece of heaven right there,” she said.