Y’all, I about fell over when I saw Laura Dean’s Nashville Banner story about how the Tennessee Preservation Trust is refusing to sell the land they own in Monteagle — land that once belonged to the Highlander Folk School before the state took it from them — back to the Highlander Center. Every inch of this story is infuriating, and I could write a whole thing that was just me saying, “Who in the hell does Tennessee Preservation Trust think they are?”
To make a long story short, this nonprofit bought land they knew had been what we might call “stolen” from the Highlander Folk School by the state, and then sold off. And now this group — which would seem to be about preserving the property, being the Tennessee Preservation Trust and all — is selling the land they own in Monteagle to the owner of The Caverns rather than the Highlander Center, perhaps because they aren’t kissing the TPT’s ass enough.
This is barely an exaggeration. From Dean’s story:
[TPT board chair Phil] Thomason said he felt dismayed by how his organization was characterized in the media, and that, he added, may have affected the board’s current stance. In a letter opposing the nomination, the Highlander Center referred to TPT as an “elite, white-led organization” and accused some of its board members of “glorifying the Confederacy.”
“The Highlander Center thinks we are not a fit steward of the property,” Thomason said. “The attitude is, ‘We want to buy the property from you because you are not worthy.’ It hasn’t exactly won over the hearts and minds of my board members, and some are frankly offended.”
The Tennessee Preservation Trust website does not appear to be working as of this writing, so I couldn’t easily see who the board members beyond Thomason are — to judge if they’re an elite, white-led organization. But everyone who has Tennessee Preservation Trust listed in their business biographies or LinkedIn profiles with one exception is white, and they all seem to be very well-off people. Again, since I couldn’t find a list of current board members, I couldn’t judge if any of them like to glorify the Confederacy.
Still, isn’t it weird that a group active enough to be in a public fight with the Highlander Center doesn’t have a working website? I looked on the Tennessee secretary of state’s website to see what I could find out about TPT, and ... y’all, is this a real group? I mean, it clearly used to be a real group. It had registered agents and submitted annual reports. I can see on the internet that it used to hand out awards and have events. But on Aug. 11, 2021, the group’s status was made “Inactive – Dissolved (Administrative).” Then, on Aug. 26 of that same year, it applied for reinstatement.
This came a year after the IRS revoked their tax-exempt status. The last filing the IRS has from them is 2016. In August 2022, David Currey of TPT talked to the Sewanee Mountain Messenger: “In response to rumors TPT was dissolving, Currey said the president of the board’s battle with cancer and subsequent death led to a lapse in tax filings, but TPT was in the process of securing reinstatement of its nonprofit status.”
The Tennessee Preservation Trust owns four parcels along Old Highlander Lane in Monteagle — three they bought in 2014 and one they bought in 2019. There are 12 properties (including these four) along that road. There’s no sale price listed for four other property owners. One guy paid $18,000 for his land, but the parcel map didn’t show how many acres he had. The three property owners who paid something for their land and had acreage listed paid between $25,000 and $32,000 an acre. I checked Realtor.com, and empty lots (which many of the lots on Old Highlander Lane are) are going for $10,000 to $20,000 an acre unless they’re in a prime spot. Maybe Old Highlander Lane is a prime spot, hence the $25,000 to $32,000. Only one of the lots Tennessee Preservation Trust bought up along that road was in that price range. They paid $15,000 for 0.79 acres in 2019 — making that just under $19,000 an acre.
But the properties they bought in 2014? (And remember, only one original Highlander building still exists up there, so when I start spewing these numbers, keep in mind that two of the parcels are materially no different than the other properties up there.) In 2014, they bought three parcels and paid $240,000 each for two of them, and $179,000 for the third. That’s $190,479 an acre for one, $143,712.57 per acre for the next, and $143,200 for the third.
Tennessee Preservation Trust — a group that seemingly doesn’t have a working website, appears to have not filed a 990 with the IRS since 2016 and whose current organization is impossible to discern — was once, a decade ago, flush with enough cash that they could pay half a million dollars for land no one else who owns property on the old Highland School land has ever paid nearly that much for?
It makes no sense. I found the story about this real estate transaction in the Sewanee Mountain Messenger from May 16, 2014. Brenda and David Gordon had been living on the property and running their nonprofit organization Sports and Cultural Exchange International (which was technically the owner of the property) since 1999. Sports and Cultural Exchange International sold the land to the Tennessee Preservation Trust. Madeline and Howell Adams seemed to have loaned TPT some money to buy the property.
TPT’s tax return for 2015 does show evidence, I think, of this real estate transaction. In part X, 10a, they list their “land, buildings, and equipment” assets at $537,751. That must be the Highlander land, right? They have a secured mortgage listed as $400,766. And they’re showing Program Service Revenue from the "Highlander School Proj" of $145,125, which is pretty close to being the land value minus the mortgage. The next year, they have an unsecured mortgage that started out the year at $400,776 and ended the year at $410,000, which, I don’t know, seems like not the direction a mortgage should go. It is the direction mortgages go when you’re not paying them. Obviously, I don’t know if this is the case, but it raises suspicions.
To reiterate: 2016 is the last time the IRS has 990 from TPT. In that year, they ended up owing more on their $400,000 mortgage than they did at the beginning of the year. In 2020, since the IRS hadn’t gotten a return from them in three years, their nonprofit status was revoked. In 2021, TPT was dissolved at the state level and then reconstituted. In 2022, David Currey told the Sewanee Mountain Messenger that, yes, there had been a lapse in their tax filings, but TPT will work toward getting square with the IRS once more. There is no evidence that has happened yet. TPT barely exists and seemingly ceased to exist, briefly, at least once. So who’s been paying the mortgage on the Highlander land during all this trouble?
And if no one has, then who really owns the land right now? Or to throw a more complicated wrench into the works, what if someone has been paying the mortgage all along for the TPT while they’ve been in this weird limbo state of almost-nonexistence? And is that a gift or a loan?
I mean, I guess I just wonder if the real reason TPT isn’t selling the land back to the Highlander Center is because, logistically, it just can’t.
