The Jefferson College Board of Trustees has hired Main Key Realty in Festus to handle the sale of the college’s Imperial campus at 4400 Jeffco Blvd.
Board members voted unanimously April 17 to award the contract for real estate services to Main Key Realty, which has agreed to charge a 2.5-percent commission to sell the property, which is just south of Arnold. The college received two bids for the real estate services, with Main Key Realty submitting the lowest commission rate.
The Imperial campus previously housed the college’s Law Enforcement Academy and EMT-paramedic programs, but in 2024, construction of an addition at the college’s Arnold campus, at 1687 Missouri State Road, was completed, and those programs were relocated to that facility. The third-floor addition was part of a $5.2 million renovation at the Arnold campus that also included expansion and renovations of biology labs at the site.
The EMT-paramedic programs moved to the Arnold campus in spring 2024, and the Law Enforcement Academy moved to the Arnold campus in fall 2024. That left the college’s Imperial campus vacant.
Jefferson College President Dena McCaffrey said college officials would like to sell the 21,000-square-foot Imperial campus building by the end of the next fiscal year, which ends June 30, 2026.
She said college officials had not set a minimum price for the sale, waiting until they can discuss a suitable selling price with the Realtor.
McCaffrey said Jefferson College officials attempted to sell the Imperial campus years ago, long before she became the college president in July 2020.
According to an April 22, 2010, Leader story, the Imperial campus had been vacant from 2007, when the Arnold campus opened, until 2010, when the college began remodeling the facility so programs could resume there. That story further stated that the Imperial campus “had been on the market until recently.”
The April 17 meeting was the board’s first since the April 8 election, when both longtime trustee Krystal Hargis and Tim Lewis, who had been appointed to the board to fill a vacant seat, won six-year terms and Bob Boyer, a newcomer to the board, won a seat for an unexpired four-year term. The rest of the six-member board includes Margie Passmore, Steve Meinberg and Retta Tuggle.
When the board reorganized early in the meeting, the trustees reelected Passmore as the board president.