Earlham Conner Prairie update
The Star today has an update on Earlham’s struggle to settle the Conner Prairie dispute with the Indiana Attorney General, Steve Carter:
A deadline passed on Wednesday without an anticipated report of the final settlement.However, lawyers are said to be working on the complex paperwork to split up hundreds of millions of dollars in assets and land.Under Carter’s plan, accepted in principle by Earlham’s trustees, the new foundation and its board would receive $91.5 million from the endowment and 2,200 acres of land, including the living history museum in Fishers and adjacent land in Fishers and Carmel.Earlham would keep the remaining $82.5 million in the Conner Prairie endowment, which has been created through the years from Lilly stock donated in the 1960s and ’70s. And Earlham would retain roughly 500 undeveloped acres.
Also added was some additional insight into what Earlham intends to do with its 500 acres, a plan that has many stirred up in Carmel, and something I suspect led to much of this dispute in the first place:
Earlham College has proposed developing more than 1,000 homes on some undeveloped land it owns adjacent to Conner Prairie, the popular living history museum in Hamilton County.However, the college has at least temporarily shelved its plans, filed earlier this year, while talks continue with Indiana Attorney General Steve Carter to try to settle a 2-year-old dispute over control of the museum.
