The state Senate Finance Committee voted along party lines Tuesday against a bill that would give Nashua $20 million to purchase the former site of Daniel Webster College. Four Republicans voted in favor and two Democrats against.
The city developed the plan to buy the former college site from a Chinese education consulting company following controversy over an industrial site in Nashua. The industrial site was purchased by a different Chinese company last year. In the wake of that purchase, state lawmakers passed a bill barring nationals from a series of countries, including China, from future real estate purchases in the state.
Nashua Mayor Jim Donchess said the city saw the opportunity to buy the former college as a way to address anxieties around foreign ownership in the state and “do something productive,” like build housing.
“The state legislature passed a law making it illegal for Chinese nationals to buy property in New Hampshire,” he said. “So, given that concern, it seemed reasonable that the same people in the state legislature might want to appropriate money to buy the college to take it out of Chinese hands and meet one of the state's needs.”
But lawmakers who spoke critically about Chinese influence in the city did not endorse the effort.
“Let’s call this bill what it really is – a $20 million taxpayer bailout,” Senate Majority Leader Regina Birdsell (R-Hampstead) said in a statement. “Nashua City Hall let foreign adversaries buy up its land, and now they want NH taxpayers to buy it back.”
Donchess said that originally, the college was a non-profit institution that was then sold to a for-profit company. That company went bankrupt. He said the bankruptcy was filed in Indiana, and then the college was sold in an auction in 2017 to the highest bidder, which was the Chinese education company.
“[Birdsell’s] statement suggests that she thinks that the city would have had authority,” Donchess said, “and it's just astounding to me that a state senator could be that ignorant to not understand, like how state law works when it comes to private property sales."
He said the city wanted Southern New Hampshire University to buy the land.
