FOUNDATION NEW SEMINARY OWNER

With a few quick signatures in a lawyer's office and a $600,000 loan from the seller, the Colonial Cape Girardeau Foundation took title to St. Vincent's Seminary on Friday.

The action completed a transaction that began in January with a $50,000 down payment on the $700,000 purchase price.

The property was bought from the Provincial Administration of Vincentian Fathers of St. Louis.

The foundation plans to turn the historic 20-acre site along the Mississippi River into a museum and Civil War interpretive center.

"We have accepted the warranty deed and are now owners of one of Cape's most valued and notable landmark properties," Foundation President Loretta Schneider said.

Schneider said the foundation will set up its office in the former seminary, possibly within a month.

The Catholic seminary, formerly known as St. Vincent's College, opened in 1843.

It operated as a college until 1910, educating most of the Catholic clergy in the West during that period. It then served as a seminary preparing high school boys for the priesthood before closing in 1979.

Friday's transaction took place in the Cape Girardeau office of Kevin Spaeth, the foundation's attorney. In addition to Spaeth and Schneider, those at the signing included Walt Wildman, the foundation's consultant; Mary Kistner, the foundation's real estate agent; and Thomas L. and Thomas M. Meyer, representing the Vincentian Fathers.

Besides its initial down payment of $50,000, the foundation paid $25,000 more to extend its contract on the seminary after missing a March 31 closing deadline.

Foundation officials made another $25,000 payment Friday, bringing the total down payment to $100,000.

Foundation officials received a general warranty deed to the property and a $600,000 loan from the Vincentian Fathers.

Thomas M. Meyer said the Catholic group was essentially acting like a bank. The short-term loan will be repaid with interest. Terms weren't disclosed.

Meyer said the loan could be paid within a year or less.

"The property is the collateral," he said. "This is not an open-signature loan. The property secures that loan."

A spokesman for the Vincentian Fathers in St. Louis declined to comment on the transaction.

Foundation officials also declined to discuss specific terms of the agreement.

Schneider and Wildman said the foundation plans to seek corporate funding, government grants and possibly even conventional bank loans to pay its debt to the Vincentian Fathers and turn the seminary into a museum.

Schneider is confident of securing the needed funding for the multimillion-dollar development.

But she said the overall project will take time.

"When you are restoring historic property, it is never finished," she said.