New College Panel Backs $47.5M Package for USF Sarasota Deal

The loan package landed on the table Friday morning.

New College of Florida's Finance and Administration committee voted unanimously to move ahead with financing for its purchase of the University of South Florida's Sarasota-Manatee campus, a deal requiring more than $47 million. The State University System sets rules on how its schools borrow and repay, and those rules generally bar subordinate liens, secondary debt that gets paid only after a primary loan and typically carries a higher rate because the investor accepting it takes more risk.

The college secured a $40 million loan from BankUnited, leaving a $7.5 million gap. To fill it, New College would turn to an unnamed accredited investor, a person or firm identified in financial documents only as having come through a "competitive selection process." No further detail about the investor appears in those records.

Christie Fitz-Patrick, the college's vice president of finance and administration, told the committee the vote does not settle the borrowing itself. "You guys are requesting for the Board of Governors to approve us to proceed with the borrowing of this, the financing, and working with BankUnited," she said. "And then we ultimately will enter into loan agreements, obviously, with the bank. And then that will ultimately come back before you for final approval before we close the loan."

The committee's approval sends the request to the Board of Governors, which meets Nov. 3 to take it up. If the board clears the request, loan agreements with BankUnited would follow, and the matter returns to the committee for final approval before the loan closes.