A children’s home in Green Hills has decided to sell its historic campus. The board of Monroe Harding voted Wednesday to put its remaining 22 acres on the market.
Fewer and fewer teens have been housed on the rolling, leafy campus in recent years. The Department of Children’s Services has preferred home placements,
even though those have been hard to find in recent years.
“Monroe Harding’s location on Glendale Lane served as a home for generations of youth and was the perfect fit for those times,” CEO Mary Baker told supporters in an email. “Our mission is not changing, just our location.”
Monroe Harding has also turned its focus to supporting foster care families with 45 on its roster currently. The non-profit owns 19 apartments in West Nashville for those who’ve aged out of foster care and operates a resource center downtown.
Only a dozen children lived on the Monroe Harding campus until the cooperative living program shut down in March.
It’s unclear how much the land could fetch. But in 2012, about a quarter of the campus was
sold off for nearly $1.3 million. Spokesperson Sarah Brock says proceeds will fund the new priorities.
“We just really want to make sure that we are serving these children and youth the best way we can,” she said. “And we’d like to serve more of them. So this is really an evolution for us.”
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