What mysteries do Indian River State College development plans hold for its community?

Indian River State College held its spring commencement a few days ago. If a recently unveiled set of development plans come to pass, then IRSC may soon be graduating soon, too ― from a commuter-oriented school to a university with a more-robust campus life.

As TCPalm's Colleen Wixon reported, a developer has presented college officials with plans to build a hotel, museum, convention center, one or more restaurants, classrooms and student housing at the Massey Campus in Fort Pierce.

The project, which would be completed in phases, sounds exciting. At least from what little we know about it.

And therein lies the problem.

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While this project could have a massive impact on the school as well as the community it serves, IRSC officials say they can't disclose details about the plans. Since IRSC is a taxpayer-funded institution, one of our region's key public institutions, this is extremely worrisome.

Suzanne Seldes, IRSC's associate vice president of communications, indicated the proposal arrived at the IRSC Foundation's doorstep unsolicited.

"The unsolicited proposals directed to our Foundation demonstrate external interest in helping the College further develop as a springboard for economic mobility," Seldes wrote in an email. "The onus is on the proposer to make the case as to how their concept will benefit the College, our students and our community, and the business model will need to address sustainability."

OK, but college officials say state law prohibits them from making public the proposal's details. Instead, the college has initiated a process allowing other developers until June 15 to submit similar proposals. Similar to what, we're left to wonder.

After that deadline has passed, the proposals will be evaluated and the foundation board will meet publicly to decide which, if any, it wishes to pursue.

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It's not the first time IRSC under President Tim Moore has been secretive. It was tough to get details of the college's plans in 2021 to buy two small, Black-owned radio stations for $950,000.

Now, even if IRSC's interpretation of how to proceed under these circumstances is legally correct, which is debatable, this process seems completely backward.

Shouldn't the first step be the college determining what it needs, based on its own planning efforts and community input? If new facilities are needed, the college could send out a request for proposals to developers.

At a minimum, that type of process would allow the college to set parameters for what facilities it wants to build, as opposed to opening the possibilities for anything and everything based on a developer's whim.

This is no trifling matter. If a convention center is built and designed to accommodate campus events, that's quite a different proposition than a center that would try to lure regional or national gatherings. A center aimed at attracting regional or national events could end up in competition with a similar facility under consideration by Port St. Lucie city officials for the City Center property.

And if an on-campus convention center isn't economically viable, who is on the hook for covering its operating losses? Taxpayers? Students?

Similar questions apply to operating a museum, a hotel, restaurants or any other private businesses on campus. Are the developers planning to build these facilities, pocket their share of the profits, then ride off into the sunset while IRSC tries its hands at entrepreneurship?

IRSC's mission is to train students to succeed in the workforce, but without solid business plans behind all of those planned commercial facilities, they could end up as object lessons in failure.

It's a little crazy to think college officials would want to allow the future of their institution to be subject to the whims of whichever developers might show interest.

What if, for example, a developer wanted to put an iron smelting plant on campus? Would that trigger a process where other developers could submit plans to do that, too?

It seems like a lot of valuable time and resources could be wasted evaluating proposals that nobody at the college really thought were good ideas in the first place.

Maybe some, or all, of these amenities would be good fits for where IRSC is in this stage of its development and where it hopes to go in the future. There's really no way to know for sure until the proposals are made public and the merits discussed in a public forum.

When they are, let's hope foundation board members don't let flashy plans lure them into making bad business decisions.

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This article originally appeared on Treasure Coast Newspapers: Public left guessing while IRSC's possible future plotted by developer