Memphis Visible Music College looks to raise $3.5M by Nov. 1, pay off Downtown mortgage

Around the start of 2011, Visible Music College acquired and renovated its current space at 200 Madison Ave., the former home of C&I Bank. But its original lender ultimately sold the mortgage on the property to a group in Texas, which raised Visible’s interest rate by 18.5%, according to a loan application the school recently filed with the Downtown Memphis Commission.

These days, the Christian-oriented music school is spending around $500,000 a year in principal and interest. And this is money its leaders would rather be investing in areas that help its programming, like student scholarships and staff retention.

“We don't want to spend on the building anymore,” Ken Steorts, the president of Visible, told The Commercial Appeal. “We’re kind of tired of that… a good majority of what we would save in interest, we would be giving away in scholarships.”

So, he and his team have developed a plan that could help the school both wipe out its mortgage obligation and bolster the strength of its facility.

Raising funds

Currently, Visible is looking to raise $7 million for a variety of purposes. School leaders said $6.1 million would be used to buy out the rest of its mortgage, while $375,000 would go towards deferred maintenance. Around $525,000 would establish a new line of credit, which the U.S. Department of Education requires for the school to receive student loan funding.

If all goes according to plan, Visible also won’t have to raise the entire $7 million.

Steorts told The CA that an anonymous foundation would provide a $3.5 million match, if the school could raise the other half by Nov. 1. And already, he noted, it has commitments for just over half a million dollars, which leaves it with about $3 million left to secure. The application also shows that the college has applied for grants from other foundations and that it has reached out to 90 individual donors.

“We have a bunch of asks out there,” Steorts said. “We’ve got over that amount already out there in asks.”

The DMC loan

A slice of the funding could come from a development loan, as Visible has applied for a $200,000 forgivable loan with the Center City Development Corporation, an affiliate board of the DMC. If received, this money would be counted as part of the $3.5 million, and it would be matched by the anonymous foundation ― covering the $375,000 Visible wants for deferred maintenance.

Specifically, this funding would be spent on HVAC, roof, and elevator work.

“The building is 50 years old this year,” Steorts said. “Our HVAC is 10 years old now. We added a fifth floor last year, so we want to finish that out properly. And then we have some issues with the roof ― just leaks, buckets in rooms, and stuff like that.”

Enrollment questions

The news comes as Visible Music College looks to increase enrollment and move forward after the COVID-19 pandemic. The school has closed its Chicago and Dallas campuses, with plans to focus more heavily on Memphis and its online offerings. Currently, it has around 120 students ― about 30% of which are online ― and this number is down, slightly, from historical norms.

But according to Steorts, it’s ticking back upward after decreasing during the pandemic, and the hope is that it can grow the number more and have 180 students in the building.

Since its move to 200 Madison Ave., Visible has trained more than 1,100 students, with 55% of those students remaining in Memphis post-graduation, per a DMC staff memo.

John Klyce covers education and children's issues for The Commercial Appeal. He can be reached at john.klyce@commercialappeal.com.

This article originally appeared on Memphis Commercial Appeal: Memphis Visible Music College looks to raise $3.5 million by Nov. 1