CITY TASK FORCE ASKED TO FIND FUNDING FOR SEMINARY MAINTENANCE

The Colonial Cape Girardeau Foundation on Tuesday asked a city task force to help find ways to pay for the anticipated $100,000 to $150,000 annual cost of maintaining St. Vincent's Seminary. The foundation made no specific proposals for how the money could be raised.

The Provincial Administration of Vincentian Fathers' sale of the 20-acre seminary grounds to the foundation is due to close March 31. The foundation wants to turn the seminary into a Civil War interpretive center and museum.

The foundation is attempting to arrange bank loans for the $650,000 still needed to buy the seminary. It is asking the Colonial Cape Girardeau Foundation Task Force's help in securing long-term funding for development of the property.

The foundation backed off its previously announced intention of outlining funding proposals to the task force.

"The consensus was, if we came in there to the meeting and said do this and do this, it would be presumptuous of us," said Walt Wildman, the foundation's consultant.

The 10 attending members of the task force, which last met in the spring of 1993, scheduled an executive meeting to begin investigating sources of maintenance income for the seminary. The task force, chaired by John Schneider, is expected to make a funding recommendation to the City Council eventually.

Wildman told task force members the amount needed for maintenance is difficult to pin down at this point in the development of the project. He said last month's utility bill was more than $1,200 -- "without anything on."

Salaries for a director and secretaries, a maintenance person and consultant fees are some of the items that would have to be paid for annually.

Wildman said federal and state historic and cultural development grants will become available to the foundation once it takes possession of the seminary, and having an operational budget also will help the foundation secure grants.

Wildman said the renovation of the seminary is expected to occur over a number of years.

The immediate goal is to upgrade the building so that community groups can begin using it next fall, according to Barbara Rust, the foundation's first president and now a member of its board.