Shuttered FiDi College Hopes for Salvation by Friday
The King’s College, an evangelical Christian institution of higher learning located at 56 Broadway (near Exchange Place) that lost its academic accreditation and closed in the summer of 2023, is hoping for a second act. The school’s board of trustees recently circulated a request for proposals that promises “to gift the college, including its charter and intellectual property… to likeminded evangelical Christians who propose the most compelling vision to resume the operations of the college to serve Kingdom purposes.”
In a story first reported in late January by Religion Unplugged, an arm of the Media Project (a online news desk that covers religion, and had an office within King’s College until the school closed), the trustees hope to submit a plan of action to State education officials this summer, but only if they receive a credible proposal from a potential partner with “sufficient resources to create a significant center for Christian higher learning.” Proposals are due this Friday, February 7.
When the school shut down operations in 2023, its leaders insisted this did not necessarily mean the end of the King’s College, despite struggling under a debt load of more than $25 million. Month before the closure, they had put out a call for a donations, saying they needed a minimum of $2.6 million to continue operating. This solicitation brought in slightly more than five percent of that amount.
Since closing, “all tangible assets have been sold, with proceeds used to retire debt,” the proposal circulated in January says. “Settlement and release agreements have been negotiated with the largest remaining creditors. Funding required to implement these agreements has been identified, and the Board intends for the College to be debt-free by mid-2025. [The King’s College] must either dissolve or present a go-forward plan to the New York State Education Department by July 15, 2025.” The same documents says that applicants must attest to their “proposed vision and affirm faith alignment, planning capacity and the adequacy of resources.”
In 2024, the College sold its dormitory (the former Riff Hotel on Washington Street) for $15 million, with the proceeds going to creditors. That building had been purchased with donations from a family of donors that included former Trump Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos and Blackwater founder Erik Prince, and named DeVos Hall. In 2022, students were ordered to move out and relocate to a block of apartments the College rented in Brooklyn. The following year, those students began receiving eviction notices, alleging that Kings College had failed to pay rent on their units.
The adversity faced by the King’s College is far from unique among Lower Manhattan institutions of higher learning. The Metropolitan College of New York, which has been based at 60 West Street since 2016, is seeking to sell all or part of its Lower Manhattan campus in satisfaction of $62 million in bond debt that has fallen into arrears.
A similar drama unfolded at Alliance University, another evangelical Christian educational institution previously known as Nyack College until rebranding itself in 2022. Based at Two Washington Street (near Battery Place) since 2018, Alliance closed permanently in the summer of 2023 after declining enrollment and a cash crunch led education regulators to withdraw its accreditation.
And in 2022, New York State education officials forced the shutdown of Olivet University’s Manhattan campus, which had been located at Six Barclay Street, citing “a well-established pattern of non-compliance with laws, rules, and regulations” and a litany of financial problems, tax liens, and lawsuits, as well as a Department of Homeland Security probe into allegations of money laundering, human trafficking, and immigration fraud.