Thoughts on the sale of Naropa’s main historic campus to…?

First: the campus is a blessed, sacred, warm, exciting place. The venerable, giant sycamores…Trungpa teaching my Level 5 of Shambhala Training, Ginsberg walking to watch the fireworks, so many great classes and gatherings…the bike shed, the cottages, the Library and PAC stage. I have countless memories there dating back to being a little boy singing the Vidya School song. My parents were students of Naropa’s first summer, ever, and I was born on the one day off between two sessions, that summer..!

More on what we’re giving up:

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“The Reverend Diana McLean, a Unitarian Universalist minister who earned a master of fine arts in creative writing at Naropa in 2009 and later worked as an administrator in the Jack Kerouac School, described the sale of the university’s main site as “heartbreaking.”

She pointed specifically to the loss of Naropa’s Performing Arts Center and the Ginsberg Library, citing the “lineage of writers who had been there in years past.”

“I believe that some spaces are made sacred not by religious affiliation but by what happens there,” McLean wrote by email. “Places either I or my Naropa classmates have described that way include PAC, the sycamore tree [outside the Allen Ginsberg Library], the tea house, the print shop, and more. For me, the PAC stage is the most sacred place on campus.”
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Not to mention Naropa’s sale of Alaya, a wonderful preschool that needs our support now.
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Back to the questions at hand:

I have a lot of faith in Chuck Lief, a student of Chogyam Trungpa, funny guy, business leader of various enlightened enterprises. Naropa has been shaky financially…forever, without the endowment or donations of a major school. Many of the majors don’t result in a wealthy alumni body.

Online learning is a large part of Naropa’s future, so a smaller campus makes sense. But why not sell the far less valuable Nalanda campus, which though lovely and invested in and surrounded by sweet prairie dogs could still fetch a strong price, with its location on the ever-expanding east side of town?

Obvious answer: downtown campus would be worth 20x more.

That said, was fundraising invested in and pursued? There is so much money here, and elsewhere, that could be inspired to help Naropa stabilize and move forward for another few generations.