From Staff Reports 

Odyssey Community School on Jan. 9 announced plans to sell its 90 Zillicoa Street campus to the UNC Asheville Foundation. 

So as not to disrupt the educational environment for its 120 K-12 students, Odyssey will rent the school back from the foundation for the duration of the school year. Meanwhile, the search is on for a more affordable location, within the city limits, for the 2014-2015 school year.

According to Bill Loose, chair of Odyssey’s board of directors, financial issues motivated the sale. In a letter to the Odyssey Community, he said the seven-year, $2.1 million loan secured for the school’s purchase had become due. The school lacked the resources to pay, and its representatives had been unable to negotiate acceptable refinancing terms with the lender, Home Trust Bank.

 Trying to keep the school “sustainable” in light of its financial pressures, the board concluded the Odyssey Community would be best-served by keeping the people and the culture together, but on a less expensive piece of real estate. According to Loose, “Odyssey is its great and insightful teachers, staff, parents and children. It is not the physical location of the school, but the people who constitute its community.”

UNCA will be picking up a valuable parcel of property. According to Loose, “We have been very fortunate to find a buyer for the property that will allow Odyssey to pay off the enormous debt associated with the property. UNCA Foundation has the intention to purchase the property at its real estate appraised value. This solves the majority of the debts owed by Odyssey.”

The tract adjoins the 9-acre parcel the UNCA Foundation picked up through a gift and sale in 2011, after the Health Adventure’s Momentum project went bankrupt. The interactive children’s museum had plans for a $25 million science center at 525 Broadway St. that never lifted off. The university acquired the property after it had been sold to TD Bank in a foreclosure auction.

Speaking of the first acquisition, UNCA’s Chancellor Anne Ponder announced, “Because it is so very rare for a piece of property of this size adjacent to campus to come on the market, the University has been investigating how we might be able to acquire it, even in these difficult economic times.”

Ponder expanded on the university’s interest in acquiring property at a 2011 Leadership Asheville Forum. “Even though we don’t know precisely how we might use property in the future, we are not confident it will be available,” she said. “We think the university could and should do what it can to acquire it.”

Both Ponder and Michael Andry, chairman of the board for the UNCA Foundation, have indicated the purposing of the properties will be sorted out in a master planning process. In a recent press release, Andry referred to the acquisition simply as “an opportunity to facilitate the long-term growth of UNCA.”

 The 6-acre tract had been a bragging point for Odyssey. The school’s web site describes a “wooded six-acre campus... nestled in a natural sanctuary in the heart of a vibrant city.”

In 2007, the property was acquired through loans to open the Odyssey Community School, a 501(c)(3) organization. 

It had already been partially-developed by Duke University, and sported 25,000 square feet of educational space that included normal schoolrooms as well as a greenhouse, an aquaponic system, and a commercial kitchen.

Over the years, Odyssey upgraded the facilities to include 21st-century classrooms and added music and pottery studios, a junior Olympic-sized swimming pool, and tennis courts. According to Loose, the process of identifying a new location “is well underway with at least two very viable options already being considered.”

 As the school seeks a new location and new leadership, its current headmaster John Johnson will continue to serve as a consultant. Johnson, who is also the founder of the Rainbow Mountain Children’s School, led the K-12 school with a philosophy based on the work of Ken Wilber, Thomas Berry, and Thomas Friedman. The school distinguished itself from other alternative education centers by its emphasis on scholastic excellence and self-awareness.