Notre Dame de Namur appears to be in a grim death spiral
These are dark days for Notre Dame de Namur University, and the worst may be yet to come.
The small, financially-challenged Belmont Catholic school is purposely shedding students, halting programs (intercollegiate athletic programs have been eliminated), laying off staff, ending new admissions and actively seeking transfer opportunities for its current freshmen and sophomores.
Ten colleges, including six in the Bay Area (Menlo College is one of them) have agreed to consider and facilitate NDNU transfers as they come forward.
Students who are on target to get their degrees in 2021 will be provided with the means to do so if they choose to stay at the school. After that, all bets are off.
NDNU may well close a year from now. That decision, though, has not been made by school authorities, who are said to be examining their options. But the signs are not encouraging.
NDNU, long known as the College of Notre Dame, was founded in 1851 as Notre Dame Academy in San Jose; today it is on life support. The ongoing virus pandemic has only made the death spiral more dire and urgent.
The campus is located off Ralston Avenue, west of El Camino Real and sits on 50 valuable acres of prime tree-shaded land. It is part of a Notre Dame educational complex that includes an allgirls’ high school and an elementary school.
Like other schools throughout the state, NDNU is locked down, its entrances blocked off. Its remaining students are receiving their education online.
According to the college’s website, full-time equivalent undergraduate and graduate students have dwindled to 959, said to be 33% below the school’s 2013 figure. The freshman class numbered just 120 this academic year.
And there’s more bad news. Historic Ralston Hall, an iconic campus structure that dates back to its completion in 1867, was deemed structurally unsafe eight years ago; the imposing building has sat empty since 2012.
The latest estimate to repair Ralston Hall has risen to $25 million, according to NDNU’S former assistant director of communication and media relations Zachary Rogow.
Although a reported $20 million has been raised for that purpose, donations are no longer being sought as cost estimates increase, he said.
The decision to terminate any further effort to finance the renovation of the building — and to focus on the college’s worsening fiscal prognosis — was announced last August.
Donors who desire to have their money returned have been accommodated by the school, Rogow said just before he was laid off.
The founders of the school, the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, moved it to the former estate of William Ralston in 1923; it was a female-only college until men were added in 1969.
The Van’s, Steelhead
The Van’s, a landmark dining/drinking establishment in Belmont since 1947, has closed.
Loring De Martini, who has owned the restaurant since 1973, said the decision to shut it down was made in late March. Reasons included retirement, a property sale and the pandemic.
The eatery’s building, perched on a hillside near the San Mateo border, has historic significance; it is a former Japanese teahouse that dates back to 1915 and the Panama Pacific International Exposition held in San Francisco.
Farther north in downtown Burlingame, the Steelhead Brewery, a fixture on California Drive for nearly a quarter-century, has shut down all operations as well.
Significant financial/lease issues, magnified by the impact of the pandemic, reportedly sealed the restaurant/ bar’s fate.
A spokesman for the enterprise said the decision to shut down for good was made earlier this month. “We are heading back to Oregon,” he said in a brief telephone conversation.