Mar 28Good Counsel developer lays out tentative plans, timeline
The second attempt to redevelop the 90-acre Good Counsel Hill, once home to a congregation of Catholic sisters and a girls boarding school, is underway — this time by a nonprofit developer pledging a project that will honor the values of the School Sisters of Notre Dame.
More than 80 people showed up to the initial community open house Wednesday to hear about the Southwest Minnesota Housing Partnership’s plans for the historic and widely cherished property.
“The partnership is committed to working with the community,” said SWMHP consultant Breanne Rothstein, who led the meeting at Pioneer Bank.
Rothstein described a general vision of the next chapter for Good Counsel, with a promise of detailed proposals by the end of the year. The expectation is for a mix of uses including affordable apartments and owner-occupied homes; an assisted living center; leasable office, educational and nonprofit spaces; outdoor areas available to the public; and community gathering spaces.
First, though, will come many, many meetings. SWMHP, which has a purchase agreement with the School Sisters but has not completed the sale, will be meeting between now and the end of the year with investors and potential tenants of the 200,000 square feet of existing building space on the campus. SWMHP staff will also be meeting with city officials, the Planning Commission and the City Council to develop a master plan for the property and change zoning and land-use designations to fit the plan.
“So it’ll be well into 2026, probably, before there’s any actual change,” Rothstein said.
The first construction will most likely involve single family homes on a former pasture just below the hill in the Tourtellotte Park neighborhood. As many as eight single-family homes are planned along Fourth Street. That work is a priority because it will be financed partly with state funding that must be spent within the next year and a half.
The homes would be part of a community land trust SWMHP is pursuing in cooperation with the state, the city of Mankato and Blue Earth County, said Jen Theneman, director of real estate and community development for SWMHP.
Breanne Rothstein, a consultant working with Southwest Minnesota Housing Partnership, leads a discussion Wednesday at Pioneer Bank during an open house covering the developer’s proposal for the Good Counsel Hill property. Currently owned by the School Sisters of Notre Dame, the property came up for sale four years ago.
More than 80 people attended Wednesday’s open house at Pioneer Bank.
A land trust makes homes more affordable by using a nonprofit trust to purchase and maintain ownership of the land beneath the house. That reduces the overall cost of a home because the buyer is responsible only for financing the structure, paying only a nominal amount each year to lease the underlying land. In return for the discounted home, the homeowners agree — if they sell the house at some point in the future — to sell it only at an affordable price to another income-eligible buyer.
A sizable portion of Wednesday’s crowd was made up of residents of the Tourtellotte Park neighborhood, who appeared to be much more comfortable with the plan than they were when higher-density housing options along Fourth Street were previously floated by potential developers of the property.
Although the Good Counsel property offers an exceptional redevelopment opportunity, it’s also a complex one that has struggled to gain momentum. Monday will mark the fourth anniversary of the announcement by the Central Pacific Province of School Sisters of Notre Dame of plans to sell its properties on four campuses, including the Good Counsel Hill. The asking price in a 2021 real estate listing was $10.63 million.
About two years after announcing plans to sell, the province reached a purchase agreement with local developer Mike Drummer on the portion of the Mankato property that hadn’t already been sold to Loyola Catholic School.
By fall of 2023, as the elderly sisters were vacating the property, Drummer was bringing redevelopment plans to the city of Mankato. They included single-family homes or duplexes on the pasture land, patio homes for seniors on the north side of the Good Counsel Hill, 100 apartments in the historic buildings that once housed the sisters, and a residential treatment center for adults with addictions.
The idea of a treatment center, which was to be operated by the nonprofit organization Minnesota Adult & Teen Challenge, prompted intense opposition from parents and others associated with the nearby Catholic school. The backlash prompted Adult & Teen Challenge to withdraw from the project, and Drummer decided in February of 2024 that he couldn’t make the development work without that component.
It took another year for the purchase agreement with the SWMHP to be worked out, and Rothstein said there is a great deal of due diligence required before any sale will be finalized. The price in the purchase agreement has not been disclosed.
The property’s scale and its uncommon features make it both daunting and intriguing as a redevelopment site. It features 90 acres of forest, pasture and landscaped grounds in the heart of Mankato, 154 mostly-dormitory-style residential units, a basketball gym, a library, a conference center, a large solar array, multiple historic brick buildings, a water tower, art studios and a Romanesque chapel featuring 60 stained-glass windows and imported marble and tile from Italy and Germany.
Rothstein said that a major asset of the property is the devoted stewardship its longtime owners provided since first putting down roots on the hill in 1912.
“The sisters have invested in keeping these properties pristine,” she said, later adding that potential tenants clearly find the site attractive. “There is a lot of interest, a lot of interest in occupying that space.”
SWMHP is committed to crafting a project that honors the historic nature of the campus and meshes with the School Sisters’ values of promoting knowledge, community, environmental stewardship and good housing for people who need it, according to Rothstein. While the details are very much pending, she indicated that portions of the Good Counsel grounds and the chapel would remain open for public use, that the solar array and community vegetable gardens would be preserved, and that housing would be environmentally sustainable, equitable and affordable.
Sister Mary Kay Ash of the School Sisters of Notre Dame, the current owners the Good Counsel Hill property, pens notes at Wednesday’s open house.
Attendees at Wednesday’s open house watch an informational presentation.
The 90-acre Good Counsel campus is a unique mix of history and nature.