Potential buyer hopes to turn campus into medical school on Owatonna

OWATONNA - Right now the historic campus that once housed Pillsbury Baptist Bible College lays dormant under a thick blanket of snow. But J Pryor painted a picture of the campus bustling with medical students from countries all over the world — he plans to recruit a substantial number of students from Asia, Europe and Latin America.

The $6.9 million campus has been on the market since the Christian college folded in December 2008, and Pryor hopes to establish a four-year, post-graduate medical school on the site.

“We’re going to have 400 on campus at any given time. What makes us a little bit different is that rather than one admission date per year, we’ll have three, with 100 students per admission cycle,” Pryor said Tuesday from his home in Florida. “Then students will stay on campus for 16 months.”

The school will be legally organized as a 501c3 non-profit that offers a “community-based medical education program” with an emphasis on primary care rather than research. Pryor said that “community-based” model takes a different approach to clinical training. In most major medical schools, students do their clinical training in large hospitals affiliated with the university, which gives them a lot of experience in severe medical crises, Pryor said, but less with day-to-day ailments.

He explained it with an analogy.

“If you’re training a fireman, would you want to put him in a roaring fire right away or teach him to put out a campfire first?” he said. “Instead of throwing them into the fire, we’re putting them into common situations — local clinics, small hospitals — so they become better diagnosticians. This has proven so effective that most medical schools are adapting community-based programs into their curriculum.”

After students complete four years at his school, they would then do their residency, he said.

By Pryor’s estimates, the school would have 75 to 82 instructors on the faculty. The medical school should bring in about 200 jobs all told, he said. However, after the school starts up, his own role will be small.

“I’m not going to be involved in running the med school day-to-day on any level. I don’t have the qualification for that but I’m putting together a team that does,” Pryor said. “I’m the founder. I’m the spark plug that’s making this whole thing happen.”

Pryor is not a doctor himself, though he has a medical background. He said he began his career in the U.S. Air Force where he was trained as a physician’s assistant. After he left the military, he worked in the Twin Cities and then at Johns Hopkins in Maryland.

He then started his own company in Washington, D.C., which investigated insurance fraud. Eventually he enrolled in a Caribbean medical school which folded in the middle of his studies. It was then that he first thought of starting his own med school.

“I thought I could do one of these med schools better than they could,” Pryor said.

He began to investigate properties in the Republic of Panama, but backed out after the American Embassy there told him they could not ensure the safety of his person or school. At that point he started looking at sites in the states — enclosed malls in Michigan and former military academies in Tennessee. He had all but decided on a site in Texas when he heard of the Pillsbury property in Owatonna.

After a tour of the Pillsbury campus, Pryor changed his mind. He hopes to buy the campus and another property in town, the old Gopher Sports facility on 24th Avenue NW. But finding a property is the easy part. Raising the money to start a medical school and getting accreditation from the Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME) is his next task.

“The accreditation is a two-year process. It’s very intense and it’s going to cost a hefty penny,” Pryor said.

Pryor said it would cost millions of dollars to get the school running. He has hired a professional fundraising firm to help, Dini Partners of Houston, Texas.

“The firm we’re bringing in has extensive list of philanthropic organizations,” Pryor said. “And people we put on the board of directors will know sources (of funding).”

Pryor hopes to cull board members from the Steele County community.

He is also hoping that both the City of Owatonna and the State of Minnesota will aid his effort to obtain tax-exempt revenue bonds, which are commonly used to fund educational facilities, churches, and other charitable groups.

In this scenario, the city would be neither a borrower nor a lender.

“It’s a kind of conduit bonding in which the non-profit would use the city’s tax-exempt status to obtain a lower interest rate,” said city finance director Brad Svenby. “But the city is not on the hook if they default. The city is not obligated to make payments on the bonds at all.”

In any case, such talk is strictly preliminary, said Dave Strand, director of community development.

“Such bonds are highly governed and regulated. There are procedures you have to go through and your business plan and idea have to be solid enough that an investor will buy the bonds,” Strand said. “It’s not giveaway money. We need business plans to review to proceed any further.”

Pryor said he is in the process of drafting the paper work.

“We have to have our business plan re-written and in the hands of the state of Minnesota by mid-January,” Pryor said. “Right now all the financials were geared for Texas.”

Clare Kennedy can be reached at 444-2376.

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Member Opinions: By: fdlyttle on 12/30/09 This is exciting! Pryor has a great rep for outstanding ideas and seeing them through. If he gets the backing he needs, this will be a huge step forward for the area. By: rosie-lady on 12/30/09 I think this is a great use of the space and a nice coup for Owatonna. I hope the City and State work with Pryor to realize this endeavor. By: pookah on 1/1/10 Great idea and I am glad to see someone who thinks "outside the box" be admired for his work. It's a major process but one that doesn't subject the city to any risk. Certainly, an idle property weighs riskier than finding a use for it. Exciting news in a difficult time. Here's hoping regulation doesn't rear its ugly head and implode his idea. That benefits no one.
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