When the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth announced the sudden closure of its downtown arts campus in New Bedford last year, just three weeks before classes began, politicians and university officials were quick to point fingers.
Conflicting allegations created a confusing tangle of blame, as movers emptied two decades’ worth of art and studio equipment from the sprawling beaux arts building into dumpsters and moving trucks.
The Star Store campus, which inherited a name from the abandoned department store it revitalized in 2001, had helped breathe new life into New Bedford’s struggling downtown, introducing hundreds of students each year to the neighborhood’s fledgling coffee shops, boutiques and art studios.
The satellite campus’ abrupt closure sparked concerns about the neighborhood’s future and scattered students across makeshift facilities at the university’s main arts building in Dartmouth and a strip mall nearby.
An independent state agency soon opened an inquiry into the Star Store’s closure, exploring whether the more than $60 million the Commonwealth poured into the satellite arts campus’ 22-year tenancy constituted fraud, waste or abuse of public funds.
The Office of the Inspector General released that report last week, unveiling the findings of an investigation that gathered previously unseen financial records and included interviews with key sources who had not yet spoken publicly.
The report offers the most definitive account yet of the unusual financial arrangement that created the Star Store campus and, in the view of the inspector general, doomed it to fail from the outset.
This story was reported by The Public’s Radio. You can read the entire story here.
