Fayette officials to Penn State: Sell branch campus to county for $1

By JOE NAPSHA
TribLive

Fayette community leaders are hoping Penn State will sell its 100-acre campus near Uniontown to a county authority for $1.

“They (Penn State) have all the information in front of them,” including the request that the university sell the campus for $1, said Fayette County Commissioner Scott Dunn.

The campus could be home to a combination of higher education institutions and trade schools that focus on developing a trained workforce for Fayette employers to fill high-priority occupations needed to grow their business, said Muriel Nuttall, executive director of the Fayette County Chamber of Commerce. Nuttall said there are several models of multi-institution campus across the country.

The commissioners created the Fayette County Educational Authority to operate and maintain the campus, Dunn told about 50 Fayette community leaders Thursday during a meeting at the North Union campus.

Despite the disappointment of the loss of Penn State Fayette, The Eberly Campus, at the end of the school year, leaders see “an opportunity to right-size higher education in Fayette County. Our goal in the county is to offer a strong higher education opportunity” at the site, Dunn said.

The Fayette campus transition committee plans to present Penn State with the results of a study conducted by Fourth Economy on the possible reuse of the campus as an educational institution, workforce development center and a community hub. Dunn said he hopes Penn State will make a decision later this year or early next year.

Losing a higher education institution “would be an economic death sentence in Fayette County, where we are fighting decades of disinvestment,” Dunn said.

Penn State had announced in May 2025 that it was closing the Fayette commuter campus at the end of the 2026-2027 school year, along with the New Kensington campus in Upper Burrell and branch campuses at Abington, DuBois, Mont Alto, Wilkes-Barre and York.

The county’s education authority, however, is not in a position to offer any university or trade school an agreement or seek funding without Penn State first selling it the campus, Dunn said. There have been contacts with about a dozen institutions of higher educations to gauge their interest in offering classes at the Fayette campus, including Westmoreland County Community College near Youngwood, PennWest California, Indiana University of Pennsylvania and Waynesburg University, Dunn said.

Fayette leaders involved in a transition committee for the campus are seeking a deal from the university at a time when Penn State’s board of trustees on Friday approved the sale of the Shenango campus to a developer for $1 million and its Wilkes-Barre to a developer for $5.25 million.

“This is local philanthropy that built this campus,” said Nuttall. The campus, which opened in 1965, is named after the Eberly family that helped in financing the facility.

“There are many families that have been involved in this and are interested in continuing this as a university,” Nuttall added.

Penn State’s Andrew Krebs said in a statement that the university appreciates the continued efforts to explore potential future uses for the Fayette campus.

“The university will continue to collaborate with the commonwealth, local leaders and community partners as that work moves forward. Discussions regarding the future of the campus remain ongoing, and no final decisions have been made regarding its long-term direction,” Krebs said in the statement.

The Fayette campus transition committee has been meeting with top echelon leaders of the university.

“Those discussions have been very fruitful and hopeful. They have all the information in front of them,” Dunn said.

Faculty and staff, however, are frustrated with the university for what Jo Janoski, an associate professor of human development and family studies at Penn State Fayette, described as a lack of communications and transparency.

Janoski, a member of the Service Employees International Union Local 668, said they do not have confidence in the university’s board of trustees.

“The university is crickets. The Fayette campus staff and students don’t know anything that is happening,” said Janoski, who has taught at the campus for 24 years.