SEMINARY GROUP AWAITS REACTION ON OFFER

The Colonial Cape Girardeau Foundation will know within a week whether or not its offer for St. Vincent's Seminary has been accepted, the real estate agent handling the deal said Wednesday.

Realtor Thomas L. Meyer said the papers have been mailed to the Provincial Administration of Vincentian Fathers in St. Louis.

He said he and members of the foundation "had been in conversation" prior to the foundation board's decision on Monday to submit an offer.

Neither party would disclose details of the offer.

The offer announced Tuesday was the first written bid made by the foundation, which wants to turn the 150-year-old seminary into a museum and Civil War interpretive center.

The asking price for the 27-acre seminary site, which has been for sale for more than four years, is $1.135 million.

Meyer said the three or four other offers for the seminary have been turned down within the past six months.

David Murphy, the foundation's executive director, said the foundation made the offer after "several" people who had pledged money to the campaign made their donations.

"You can't spend pledges," he said.

He said the foundation has been operating a direct-mail campaign that solicited donations from "friends of our foundation members."

"We've been in constant fund-raising since a year ago March," he said.

In August 1992, Murphy said the foundation's direct-mail campaign had collected "well over $35,000 on our way to $50,000."

Murphy would not say how much money the foundation has collected. "That's not something we need to divulge," he said.

If the sale is made, details of the offer will be made public if the Vincentians agree. "It's the Vincentians' call," he said.

Murphy said the timing of the offer had nothing to do with the conclusion of the city's riverboat gambling campaign.

"We weren't waiting at all," he said. "We just had to clarify the documents three times."

He referred to the seminary project as "something that's not going to be divisive. It's not a downtown thing or a westside thing."

Meanwhile, a city task force created to find ways to help the foundation buy the seminary is expected to submit a contract at the next city council meeting that will provide for an architectural review of the building.