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Welcome Message from the President
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Acquiring Brick and Mortar
Unaware of the storm of controversy that was brewing on the eastern horizon, I went busily about the business of expanding the physical plant of the Thomas M. Cooley Law School in the spring and early summer of 1973.
Our first acquisition was the building at 507 South Grand Avenue in downtown Lansing. We began by renting the vacant upstairs, some 5,000 square feet for $100 a month. Clyde Oding, who owned the building, was operating an engraving shop in the basement. Lyman and Sheets insurance agency occupied the first floor. Oding wanted to sell the building. I wanted to buy it.
The only problem was that Cooley didn’t have any money for a down payment. I offered Oding $250,000, on condition that he would carry a second mortgage for the down payment. He agreed. Since Cooley did not have established credit to get a mortgage from the bank, Oding simply borrowed the maximum – I think it was around $200,000 – and we agreed to make the payments.
Very soon after the deal was consummated, both Oding and the insurance company moved out. We had our first school building; 15,000 square feet on three levels.
At about the same time, we were actively preparing to admit the first full time class at Cooley. Many of the original 300 applications were from people who wanted to start in September. With the additional applications which came in during that first term, we were able to admit a class of 150 for the fall term.
Since we had only one classroom which held 75 students, we hastily constructed a second one on the south half of the second floor. That meant moving all the offices downstairs. At first it was a warren of corridors and small cubicles. Eventually, it became a very useable office.
One day I was sitting in my office at 507 when a real estate salesman stopped by and left me a brochure about the Masonic Temple which was located at 217 South Capitol Avenue, kitty corner from the state capitol. It was a massive seven story structure, fronted by four large Ionic columns. It looked like a law school. I showed the brochure to Polly and asked her what she thought of it as a home for Cooley Law School. She asked me if I had taken leave of my senses.
I went and looked at the Masonic Temple building. It was old; built in th 1920's. It showed its age. Musty, dark, and dreary, it had an air of abandonment even though the Masonic Order still used it for their meetings, and even though there was an operating cafeteria in the basement, where many of Lansing’s old guard met for lunch. Half of the first floor was dedicated to pool tables.
But the piece d’resistance for me were the four lodge rooms. Located on the second and fourth floors, they measured about 40 by 75 feet, with ceilings that approached 20 feet in height. They would make perfect lecture halls. On the sixth floor, I found another surprise; a huge auditorium surrounded by a balcony. It looked big enough to seat six to eight hundred people. That auditorium was well known in Lansing. It had been the venue for many a high school prom. It had also been the site of the Inaugural Ball of then newly elected Governor G. Mennen Williams in 1948.
A little due diligence revealed that the Masonic temple had lots of problems. The electrical system was woefully inadequate. Half of the building wasn’t heated. The city supplied steam heat had simply been turned off wherever the pipes began to leak. Bob Fisher, a new member of our board, was also on the building committee of the Masons. He cautioned against buying the building as it was officially determined to be obsolete.
I was undeterred. I negotiated a land contract with the Masons. Forty thousand down against a purchase price of $400,000. We were paying about $5.00 a square foot for the property. At first, we occupied only the lower level. Within a year, we managed to put together a mortgage to pay off the Masons and take over the entire building. Our credit was still untested. A consortium of five banks shared the risk of the loan. We paid them off in two years.
The first thing I did when we acquired the masonic Temple was to persuade my brother Ray to move to Lansing and come to work for the school. Ray had been employed by the Detroit Edison Company for about fifteen years. He was, and still is, the best nuts and bolts guy I ever knew. Could build anything, fix anything. I walked him through the Temple building and asked him to marry it. I wanted him to know every nook and cranny. I wanted him to build a team of tradesmen and artisans who could renovate and maintain it as a first class facility. He did it and more.
Over the next decade, we invested over $10,000,000 in the Temple Building. More than 12,000 students have attended classes there. It has become a venerable landmark in Michigan’s capitol city.
In 1973, the south half of Lansing’s downtown was in a free fall of decline. Stores closed. Restaurants failed. Each year there were more empty buildings. Cooley’s purchase of the Masonic Temple signaled the beginning of a rebirth that would transform a ghost town into a vibrant legal campus.
But it was not accomplished without a fight.
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This Page was last updated on:
08/19/2004