Birmingham-Southern College

Miles, BSC Ink Agreement for the Hilltop Property

The Bell Tower on the old Birmingham-Southern College campus. (Photo by Solomon Crenshaw Jr.)

Miles College and Birmingham-Southern College have signed an agreement for the sale of BSC’s 192-acre campus on the city’s west side.

Neither the price tag for the sale nor specific plans for the campus have been disclosed.

Presidents for both colleges “will work together to position the legacy of Birmingham-Southern and the future of Miles College,” a joint statement issued Wednesday by the colleges said.

Bobbie Knight, president of the nearby Miles College, said in the statement that Miles is “carefully and thoughtfully constructing and curating our next chapter.”

“We have secured partners to join us in creating a consortium for Centers of Excellence and we are pursuing partnerships including with the City of Birmingham to frame the best possible outcomes for all involved,” she said in the statement.

Boards of trustees for both schools voted unanimously to enter into the purchase agreement for the campus. Miles had signed a letter of intent to purchase the campus shortly after BSC ceased regular operations on May 31, ending its 168-year history as a liberal arts college. It had struggled with financial problems for years and was progressing in a fundraising campaign, but the plans collapsed along with a proposal for a state-backed loan to save the school.

A purchase agreement is a legal instrument between two or more parties setting out the conditions for the purchase and transfer of an asset, typically property.

Under this agreement, Miles would buy the former BSC campus – the land and buildings. But, BSC President Daniel B. Coleman said, “BSC will continue to operate as a corporate entity through the remainder of the wind-down, which includes wrapping up a range of business matters.”

Among those matters, BSC will work with the Alabama Attorney General’s Office to develop a proposal for handling the college endowment fund and will then seek court approval of that plan.

“We expect that process will take many months or even years to complete, and we will communicate with our endowment contacts once we know more,” Coleman said in the statement.

Coleman said he was pleased by the agreement with Miles. “Our hope has been to find a buyer whose mission paralleled BSC’s mission of educating young people for lives of service and significance, and whose presence on the Hilltop would also benefit the surrounding communities who have been such good neighbors to BSC for more than 100 years,” he said in the statement.

“With its roots in the Methodist tradition of service and its commitment to preparing young people for lives of leadership, Miles College fits that description.”

BSC was founded through the merger of two Methodist colleges in 1918. Miles College, a private historically black college in Fairfield, was founded in 1898 by the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church.

Miles generates nearly $70 million in total economic impact for the area and creates hundreds of direct and indirect jobs, according to the 2024 HBCU Economic Impact Report from the United Negro College Fund.

“It is clear that institutions like Miles College continue to serve as powerful engines of economic growth and opportunity,” Knight said.