An Arizona Board of Regents (ABOR) committee moved to forward the sale of property owned by Northern Arizona University (NAU) at its May 29 meeting.
The property is the former location of Granny鈥檚 Closet at the corner of Milton and Mikes Pike (218 S. Milton Road and 35 Mikes Pike St.). NAU has owned this site since 2018, when it purchased the 1.26-acre property for $4,914,000.
According to NAU聽Vice President for Finance, Institutional Planning & Analysis and Chief Financial Officer Bjorn Flugstad, who presented this item to the committee Thursday, it has been pursuing a lease or sale of the property over the past year.
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Six years after initially buying the property for just under $5 million, NAU has placed the property that includes the former Granny鈥檚 Closet back on the market.
鈥淚t is not on the contiguous border on the Flagstaff campus,鈥� Flugstad said, 鈥渁nd [we] have determined that this is the best approach for the university to be able to have some dollars come in, make some strategic investments -- including some of the investments in the IT data center that I had mentioned -- to drive utility costs down and to invest in our data network firewall, which we plan to do with the proceeds.鈥�
Flugstad said NAU has signed a letter of intent (on April 3, according to the meeting agenda) and that the terms of the transaction will be confidential until the purchase agreement is signed. The committee reviewed the specific terms in executive session.
Over the past two months, he said, the university had received two appraisals and that the currently proposed sale would be higher than the appraised value in both. NAU requested a waiver of ABOR鈥檚 policy requirement to sell property at a public auction because the offer was higher than market value and there was a lack of interest in leasing.
The committee unanimously moved to forward this proposed sale to the full board, which is expected to review this item for final approval at its next meeting, scheduled for June 12 and 13 at the University of Arizona.
ABOR posts recordings of its meetings at . This item begins about 30 minutes into the May 29 University Governance and Operations Committee.