The client
The Benedictine Sisters settled in the Black Hills of South Dakota in 1889. They have served as leaders in healthcare and education throughout the Diocese of Rapid City for more than 100 years. In the 1960s, the sisters developed a beautiful campus for a monastery and an academic complex on approximately 320 acres. The school was later converted to a learning center and the residence hall became a retreat center. In the early 2000s, the sisters built and moved into a smaller monastery, selling 200 acres to the Evangelical Lutheran Good Samaritan Society, which opened a senior living facility on the campus.
The challenge
As the sisters’ needs changed and the community became smaller, they sought to divest of their remaining 120 acres, including their residence, St. Martin Monastery. The transition of a community’s home is always difficult. Plante Moran Realpoint (PMR), the real estate consulting practice of Plante Moran, prioritized the sisters’ values in a potential sale of the property and sought to understand the sisters’ needs for communal living, care, and comfort into the future.
PMR helped the sisters work through several challenges, including resolving a contentious relationship to release a once-mutually beneficial deed restructure established between the sisters and a prominent, local, family-owned mining company. This, coupled with underlying zoning and soil conditions, threatened to further complicate the potential development of the property. PMR’s professionals, nonetheless, worked through the deed restrictions and were ultimately able to favorably identify the value of the sisters’ property.
The solution
Good Samaritan Society expressed interest in acquiring the land and invited the Benedictine Sisters to transition to the senior living facility on the campus. As part of this arrangement, the PMR team negotiated care of the sisters in perpetuity — an intangible asset.
This became much more than a property disposition for the PMR team, who not only sought a fair and successful sale but also negotiated the best possible healthcare and living situation for the sisters, down to the smallest details. PMR professionals identified, then negotiated, the breadth of care and related costs to be provided to the sisters through each stage of health care while living at St. Martin Village. Further, the team established an escrow to protect the sisters in the event Good Samaritan became unable to provide for the needs of the sisters in the future.
Throughout the process, PMR thoughtfully engaged the sisters, learning about and then working to protect their interests and preferences, earning their buy-in, and orchestrating a carefully choreographed transition from the monastery into the sisters’ new home across the street.
The benefit
The Benedictine Sisters of St. Martin Monastery remain together on the campus they so lovingly cultivated. Now as residents of Good Samaritan Village, they can look out their windows to see their beloved school and retreat center, where so many sisters ministered throughout their lives.
Property transitions are always difficult, but with the right real estate consulting team that understands your needs, the process becomes a little easier to navigate. Contact our team to learn more.
