When the nonprofit that owned much of the former St. Andrews University campus filed for bankruptcy early this year, its leaders hoped to work with creditors to keep some of the property.
But under an agreement inked this month in federal court, the Scotland Development Corporation will hand over the shuttered school’s 256-acre campus to three creditors, which will likely sell the properties.
Andrew G. Williamson, a Laurinburg city councilman and attorney who leads the SDC, said the organization didn’t have enough money to pay its debts. “We’ve never really been in the real estate business,” he told The Assembly. “At the end of the day, we really did not have the resources to continue that fight.”
The SDC bought large tracts of the campus in 2011 to maintain some local control of the campus, which opened in 1961 and thrived for years as a liberal arts school but later suffered financial challenges and declining enrollment.
Also in 2011, the school merged with Florida-based Webber International University in hopes of staying afloat. The SDC leased the property to the school for $60,000 a month, but Webber stopped making payments when the school announced its closure in April 2025.
The SDC was then on the hook to the school’s creditors—Florida-based Argent Institutional Trust Company, which acquired a longtime St. Andrews lender in 2016 and had the first mortgage on the main campus property; Foundation Capital Resources, a Missouri-based lender that had a claim to the school’s equestrian center, which housed St. Andrews’ award-winning equestrian team; and the Scotland County Economic Development Corporation, which had a stake in 80 acres surrounding the campus.
The SDC, which formed in 2003 to encourage workforce development training, tried for months to raise money from the community, Williamson said. But it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in February in North Carolina’s Middle District. The filing, in which the SDC sought relief for $5.6 million in assets and $11.2 million in liabilities, halted an auction that Argent planned for days later to sell the main campus.
Now, Argent and Foundation Capital Resources can sell their properties as soon as December, according to the agreement they reached with the SDC. Representatives of the companies did not respond to requests for comment for this story.
Scotland County Economic Development Corporation, a nonprofit focused on growing the county’s economy, will acquire its share of the property as soon as November 1.
Since St. Andrews’ closure, many people in Scotland County have wondered about the future of the Laurinburg campus, which had served as an economic driver and a source of pride for the economically distressed community.
Bo Frizzell, who chairs the Scotland County Board of Commissioners, said whoever buys the property could bring jobs and add to the local tax base. But, he said, a factory or data center could bring unwanted noise and turn the area into an industrial complex.
“We’re still waiting to see what will happen,” Frizzell said. “But we don’t know yet. There is great concern surrounding this, but right now we don’t have the answers.”
Jeff McKay, who directs the Scotland County Economic Development Corporation, said he wants to see how news of the foreclosure sales evolves before thinking of potential uses of the land surrounding the campus.
“I’m hopeful that whoever purchases these parcels will benefit the community,” McKay said, “but not knowing who that would be and what their intentions would be, it’s premature for me to comment.”