The 11-acre property known as St. Anthony’s Seminary is set to go to auction starting June 12 through Concierge Auctions, at a hoped-for opening price of $25 million. Most recently home to the Garden Street Academy, a K-12 private school, the property lies between Old Mission Santa Barbara and Mission Creek, and not far from Mount Calvary, whose owner proposed last year to build 560 apartments there on Los Olivos Street. The area is known as Mission Hill and overlooks the city down to the waterfront.
Listed by Joyce Rey, a Realtor in Beverly Hills who specializes in “global luxury real estate,” the former seminary grounds hold six buildings that total 130,000 square feet, “some ready for immediate use and others primed for reimagination,” the auction house stated. In addition to the main building of 40,000 square feet are the chapel and bell tower, gymnasium, arts and sciences building, workshop, library/dining hall, basketball/tennis court, sports field, gardens, and parking lots.
These are rendered in an interesting mix of styles, the city’s historic designation outlined. Built in 1901 to house the Seraphic College of St. Anthony, the main building was damaged in the 1925 earthquake. The upper floors were rebuilt in a Spanish Colonial Revival style, while the first floor is Romanesque, as is the chapel, and the campanile, or bell tower, is after the Italian Renaissance style.
Some with active imaginations believe the buildings are haunted by the seminarians known to have been sexually abused by friars of the Franciscan Order, who taught at the seminary or lived at the mission. According to attorney Tim Hale, the abuse went on from 1937 to as recently as the mid-1990s. The Franciscans settled with 25 plaintiffs in 2006 for $28 million, and in 2019, the Santa Barbara friars publicly identified 50 priests accused of child sex abuse dating to the 1950s, 26 of them assigned to St. Anthony’s. The Oakland-based Franciscan Friars of California declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy this January in the face of 94 sexual-abuse lawsuits and the litigation and liability costs likely to follow.
The value of 2300 Garden Street is assessed at $30.3 million although the net value is zero based on a “welfare” exemption with the state Board of Equalization. While it’s not clear what about the property qualifies it for the exemption, if the new owner builds housing or a hotel or wellness center on the site, as the auction house envisions, the city is likely to gain property tax revenue.
