After 61 years, Carrier Lodge has passed ownership from the Mississippi University for Women to private hands.
Tanner Imes, sister to Dispatch publisher Peter Imes, submitted the winning bid of $196,100 for the 8-acre property with a 5,280-square-foot building overlooking the Tombigbee River.
Hers was one of four bids submitted for the property, which MUW Director of Resources Management Angie Atkins opened Tuesday afternoon. The lowest bid was $125,050.
MUW cleared the winning bid. Tanner Imes and the Office of Resources Management have agreed to close on Friday, Executive Director of University Relations Anika Perkins told The Dispatch.
Imes declined to comment on the purchase when reached by The Dispatch.
The 60-bed recreational lodge was completed in 1962 — a year after Lenore Woollard Carrier donated $50,000 to her alma mater.
The entire project cost about $53,810 in the early 1960s, which would be about $545,951 today.
The university announced in May it would auction the property, setting the reserve amount — the minimum bid MUW was willing to accept — at $120,000, MUW President Nora Miller previously told The Dispatch.
MUW students and alumni used the lodge for recreational purposes such as social club outings, sleepovers and wedding receptions until roughly 2010. It was also a polling place from 1995 to 2019 but has been vacant ever since.
Miller said the building saw less use when the Plymouth Bluff Environmental Center was built, and leadership saw value in seeing the property go onto the tax rolls and “be put to better use.”
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