中国人不买楼买学校了!126年历史的纽约军校被买走(图)

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拥有126年历史丶名人校友无数的美国纽约军校（NewYorkMilitaryAcademy），今年3月宣布申请破产保护，本周三在破产拍卖中获一个中资非牟利组织以1600万美元购入。该组织向校方表示，将保持军校继续营运。



纽约军校是私人寄宿学校，但近年风光不再，招生人数剧减，今年3月申请破产保护。校方曾向今年入学的新生承诺继续营运，但承诺无法兑现，今年9月不仅未开学，还开始破产拍卖。

拍卖上，两位竞逐的买家均为中国投资者，最终由非牟利组织自然保育研究中心（TheResearchCenteronNaturalConservation）购入。该组织由中国搜房网始创人莫天全及妻子成立，此前曾购入纽约一座古老大宅。对于军校被外资购入，校友普遍感高兴，认为有助学校重开。由于不少学生已转读他校，外界估计军校重开后可能引入中国学生就读。

纽约军校位于纽约州康沃尔的哈德逊河畔，1889年成立时是一间男生寄宿学校，课程包括军事式训练。该校风景优美，面积广大，内有不少建筑物及军营。该校多年来出过不少知名校友，包括共和党总统提名参选人川普丶已故黑手党头目戈蒂，及着名导演法兰斯哥普拉。

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New York Military Academy to Reopen Under New Owners

POUGHKEEPSIE, N.Y. — The New York Military Academy, a 126-year-old boarding school whose graduates include the Republican presidential candidate Donald J. Trump, was bought on Wednesday for close to $16 million at a bankruptcy auction by a nonprofit group controlled by Chinese investors, who told academy officials that they would keep it open as a high school.

The Research Center on Natural Conservation, the successful bidder for the 113 scenic acres of buildings, barracks and land in Cornwall-on-Hudson, was formed in 2011 to buy another marquee New York property, the Arden House, in Harriman, N.Y. The property in that sale, a Gilded Age 452-acre estate, was built by the railroad tycoon E. H. Harriman. Records from the Internal Revenue Service and New York State indicate the nonprofit’s president is Vincent Tianquan Mo, of China and Great Neck, N.Y., who is the founder and chairman of SouFun Holdings, a Beijing-based real estate website that owns the former AIG building near Wall Street in New York City.

The academy counts among its alumni Donald Trump, a 1964 graduate who some thought might purchase the school. [size=0.6875]CreditChristian Hansen for The New York Times

With its enrollment declining sharply in an age when military prep schools have fallen out of favor, N.Y.M.A. has struggled financially. In March it sought Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection from its creditors. Despite letters assuring its incoming students, the school did not open in September as promised and went on the auction block.

Whatever the implications of foreign ownership of N.Y.M.A., the successful sale thrilled several alumni and faculty who attended the auction.

“I won’t quite believe it until the bidder tells me directly, but as James Brown says, ‘I feel good!,’ ” said Fletcher Bailey, a retired Army master sergeant who has served as a drill and marksmanship instructor at the school.

Lewis D. Wrobel, the academy’s bankruptcy lawyer, said the sale still needed the approval of Judge Cecelia G. Morris of United States Bankruptcy Court here, which he expected could come before the end of this month. The school, he suggested, could open soon after. Anthony Desa, the current president of the board of trustees would remain as president for the near future.

While it is unlikely that many students who had expected to attend N.Y.M.A. would return midsemester from the schools they are now attending, Randy Clark, the supervisor of the town of Cornwall, said the new owners might recruit Chinese students interested in studying in the United States.

Mr. Clark, who is familiar with the school’s negotiations and once organized a town bid for the property, said “China has always stressed the importance of getting their students into Western institutions.”

“It’s like a farm system in baseball,” he continued. “We’re very happy it’s a successful outcome.”

There were two bidders at the auction on Wednesday, with the winning offer of $15.825 million topping a bid by Global Preparatory Academies, a California-based firm also controlled by Chinese investors that had tried earlier to buy the school for $13.1 million but failed to come up with a down payment in time.

N.Y.M.A., which runs from the eighth through 12th grades, was founded in 1889 as a boys’ boarding school with military-themed training aiming to provide character building. It has produced soldiers and officers who fought in all of the nation’s wars since its founding and includes among its more celebrated alumni Stephen Sondheim, John A. Gotti and Francis Ford Coppola.

But like military academies across the country, N.Y.M.A. saw its allure dwindle as parents began to view such schools as draconian and military service lost cachet with contentious wars in Vietnam and Iraq. The academy is one of the few military schools remaining in the Northeast, a region where New York State alone once had more than 40.

Enrollment at the academy dropped from more than 500 in the 1960s to fewer than 100 last year. For at least five years, the school has teetered on the edge of closing, before finally seeking Chapter 11 protection.

Mr. Desa, a Las Vegas businessman, searched frantically for a buyer who could sustain the school, attracting the offer from Global Preparatory Academies. Mr. Desa, whose son is an alumnus, announced in late August that the school would open on Sept. 14, but then the would-be buyer did not produce the required 10 percent deposit.

Amy Lorigan, an English teacher at the school, said that 13 faculty and other staff members and their families were still living in on-campus housing, with another 12 or so living off campus. She said they were “all committed to returning to work at N.Y.M.A. as soon as that becomes possible.”

There was some hope among alumni in the days and weeks before the auction that Mr. Trump, a member of the graduating class of 1964, would, like the cavalry, ride to the school’s rescue with a big check. He described in a recent biography how his years at the academy had matured him after he was known for rowdy behavior at a preparatory school in Queens. The experience, he told the biographer, left him with the feeling “that I was in the military.”

But Mr. Trump, who obtained draft deferments during the Vietnam era,