FUTURE OF SEMINARY IS UNCERTAIN; TASK FORCE TO HOLD ITS INITIAL MEETING

Does anyone want one of the oldest buildings in Cape Girardeau?

The short answer is yes. The Colonial Cape Girardeau Foundation Task Force, charged with scouting for ways to buy and maintain St. Vincent's Seminary as a museum, will hold its first meeting Monday afternoon.

The foundation proposes to turn the 150-year-old seminary into a museum and Civil War interpretive center, but there are concerns about acquiring long-term funding necessary to keep the museum running in perpetuity.

"We need to find out how it can be funded long after we do-gooders are dead," said Barbara Rust, president of the foundation.

She said she is neither optimistic nor pessimistic that a solution can be found.

The other answer to the question of who wants St. Vincent's Seminary leads to another question: Can the seminary provide a return on the investment?

A 1989 study by the city estimated that renovating the buildings will cost from $165,000 to $2.5 million. The lower figure simply involves bringing the structures up to code so the space could be rented out, city Planning Coordinator Ken Eftink said.

The most expensive renovation of the seminary considered would have converted it to office space at a cost of $2.5 million.

In 1989 the city projected the annual cost of operating and maintaining the seminary at $109,500.

Dan Drury, vice president of Mid-America Hotels Inc. and a member of the task force, said his company was not interested in the seminary site primarily because it is not connected directly to an interstate highway.

"It's tied into a dead-end highway and there's not even funding on the other side," Drury said. He referred to Illinois' lack of action in funding a planned Mississippi River bridge.

If it were connected to an interstate, Drury said, "We'd take another look at it."

If the company were interested in the seminary site for a hotel, "it probably would be cheaper to tear it down and start all over," Drury said.

But tearing down the buildings "would be a shame," Drury said.

"...If anything can be used as a monument to the history of this city and its people, it's this."

Currently, three other groups are interested in the property, said Thomas L. Meyer, whose real estate firm is handling the sale asking price $1.135 million for the St. Louis-based Provincial Administration of the Vincentian Fathers.

They include a Granite City, Ill.-based religious organization eying the seminary as a Bible college and other groups situated in Minneapolis and San Francisco.

Meyer declined to provide more information about the organizations but predicted, "One of these groups is going to get it."

The seminary hit the market in spring 1989. Meyer said most serious buyers have been put off by the legal tangle rooted in the state's decision in 1988 to route the new bridge through the seminary's yard.

The state has condemned seven acres of the seminary land as right-of-way for the bridge. The right-of-way passes within 90 feet of the grotto that graces the seminary's southeast corner.

When the state offered approximately $120,000 for the land, the Vincentians sued. Meyer called the amount "ridiculous."

The Vincentians contend the condemned land is worth about $600,000 because its loss drastically reduces the property's market value.

"The seminary is worth somewhere around $500,000 now," said Albert C. Lowes, the attorney representing the Vincentian Fathers.

A commission appointed by Circuit Judge A.J. Seier is expected to decide a just compensation for the land within the next few weeks. But Lowes predicts his clients will have to appeal the commission's decision, forcing a six-to-nine-month wait for a trial and verdict.

Lowes accused the state of "trying to steal that land."

The lawsuit makes a difference to two of the four groups interested in the land, Meyer said.

"Once they are told about the highway department they don't want to get involved in a lawsuit."

Meyer said a Japanese group that intended to use the seminary as a girls' school backed out of the deal last year when the city decided to shave another four acres off the property for a street connecting the new bridge with Lorimier Street and downtown.

Meanwhile, a wild card has been thrown into the game of high-stakes real estate by the upcoming vote on whether to allow riverboat gambling in the city.

Meyer said he has been approached "indirectly" about a gambling-associated use for the seminary. Four of the seminary's acres are along the riverfront and include more than 1,200 feet of river frontage.

"That riverfront down there would be an ideal place to tie up, whether for gambling or for other purposes," Meyer said.

The Rev. John Gagnepain, who handles the Vincentian Fathers' business, said neither gambling nor any other use including clearing the land would prevent the sale.

"Once they buy it it's their land."

David Murphy, executive director of the Colonial Cape Girardeau Foundation, said the great loss would be Cape Girardeau's if the seminary is not maintained.

"This property must be saved for the people of Cape Girardeau by the people of Cape Girardeau," he said, calling the seminary "our link with the past..."

The first phase of the foundation's plan for the seminary would cost about $1.8 million not counting the purchase price and only would involve bringing the basement and main floor up to code so the building can be used.

That phase is expected to take at least two years to accomplish.

Rust said the museum would then operate for a few years before undertaking additional phases of the overall $11 million proposal. They call for construction of a U.S. Grant presidential library and amphitheater, an excursion train, a riverfront museum and replica Civil War gunboat.

Included in the foundation's plan is a restored log cabin with "working crafts" at the site of the former International Shoe Co. plant site on North Main, and a downtown trolley car.

But Rust said the complete proposal is an architect's dream that may or may not come true. To establish the proposed Grant library, for instance, would require building and equipping the structure, which then must be donated to the federal government, Rust said.

Next, the foundation would have to apply to Congress for designation as a presidential library and that designation would not be assured, she said.

"The probability is pretty slim," Rust said of building the presidential library. She added that the museum might more easily become a repository for some of Grant's papers.

"We have to be somewhat practical," Rust said.

Late last year the foundation was thwarted in its attempt to use the city's excess tourism funds to buy the property. The city instead decided to use the money to develop the city's recreational facilities.

Rust said that outcome was best for everyone all around because the tourism tax will expire in 2004. She said the key to making the museum work is finding funding that will carry it through long after the initial enthusiasm has died.

The foundation hopes to employ a combination of private and corporate donations and state and federal grants to finance the museum. But Rust said a connection with the city probably is vital if the museum is to remain healthy long into the next century.

Assistant City Manager Al Stoverink helped search for funding in 1989, when a committee was formed to explore whether the city should buy or lease the seminary property for its own use. That committee wound up making no formal recommendations, Stoverink said, because "there wasn't any money to do it with."

As the city's liaison with the new task force, Stoverink expects it will consider all public and private funding options, including hotel, park and cigarette taxes. A historical tax also could be imposed.

Rust, for one, is not keen about discussing taxes yet. "Tax is a four-letter word," she said.

Even the question of who would own the seminary the foundation or the city is still in the air, although various factions have their own ideas.

Most concerned agree that the city doesn't appear interested in running a museum. But a long-term lease agreement between the city and the foundation is one possible course.

The city has such an arrangement at the Municipal Golf Course, which it leases from the Jaycees.

To Rust, saving the seminary is a duty to future generations of Cape Girardeans. "We have to be able to say we tried."

Meyer is not convinced that the Colonial Foundation will be the ultimate owner of the property. "We have not been in any direct negotiation at all," he said.

But he said the foundation's historic preservation goals do meet the best uses for the property.

"We'd like for them to have it."