Dave-

I'm glad to read you label this possible sale as "flipping".

The idea of property flipping has been given a sort of unsavory image in recent times, when in reality, it's just another form of speculative investment.

Some flippers make a profit; others get burned. The real unfortunate legacy here is CBC's decision to move out of our region's urban core. Now they're paying the price with a hard-to-get-to West County location.

If only CBC had "flipped" its West County acreage, and reinvested the profits into its Clayton location, we all might be better off today.

Is CBC paying a price? Not being argumentative--I truly don't know.

CBC prides itself on having a diverse student body (somewhere there are stats showing breakdowns in terms of socio ecomonic and racial status).

Moving further from the city, compounded with the closing of Highway 40, will make it harder for CBC to serve lower and more moderate income students.

In addition, I have heard from one of the Christian Brothers himself expressing disappointment with the move from Clayton to West County.

The educational mission of the Christian Brothers was started some hundreds of years ago in France.

At the time, the city (Paris, I'm thinking) had many poor and homeless young boys running the streets (not wholly unlike STL, huh?).

The founding brother knew that the only hope for these young men was to gain an education. And so the mission to educate undeprivileged young men began.

Moving to a West County address doesn't exactly help to fulfill that purpose.

I was terribly disappointed when they moved to west county...felt like it was a continuation of the practice of catholic institutions abandoning service to the city (think hospitals and other private schools).

When they announced their move Brother Larry tried to placate my objections by telling me the school would 'run a bus out from the city if the demand was there'. I asked 'Where will the demand come from if you don't start out with transportation?' Did he think boys were going to stand by the road on the off-chance that a bus headed to CBC would stop by?

I don't wish them ill but it was clear that education which is accessible to low or lower-middle income students is not their priority.

Of course, at one time CBC was located at Kingshighway and Easton, a building tragically destroyed by fire in 1916. That's when the decision was made to relocate to Clayton -- a location itself not exactly low-income, but at least it was closer to the city than the current school whose architecture comically mimics the historical locations it replaced.