School tied to Trump buys land from group led by Sacramento’s Democratic Tsakopoulos family

A foundation led by the family of Sacramento land baron and prominent Democratic donor Angelo K. Tsakopoulos has sold a swath of land near Roseville to a conservative Michigan college with ties to former President Donald Trump.

Hillsdale College of Hillsdale, Mich., purchased the property for $5.83 million from the University Development Foundation, a nonprofit organization set up by the Tsakopoulos family and other landowners to build a college campus, plus housing and commercial development, on farmland west of Roseville.

Robert Weygandt, chairman of the Placer County Board of Supervisors, said the real estate deal represents a major milestone in the county’s decades-long quest to create a major college campus. Three other universities held extensive negotiations about building a campus on the parcel, but “this is the first time any university has taken ownership of a property,” Weygandt said Monday.

“It is a huge step,” said Weygandt, whose district includes the land parcel.

Map: Sacramento Bee

In political terms, the deal represents a strange bedfellow partnership. The elder Tsakopoulos is a well-known Democratic donor who slept in the White House as a guest of President Bill Clinton. His daughter, Eleni Tsakopoulos Kounalakis, also a Democrat, is California’s lieutenant governor and served as President Barack Obama’s ambassador to Hungary.

Hillsdale, a private school with 1,500 students, is known for its conservative philosophy and its Trump connections. The college refuses federal aid rather than comply with government mandates requiring disclosure of the racial composition of its student body.

The school’s president, Larry Arnn, endorsed Trump in 2016 and was reportedly on the short list of candidates to become Trump’s education secretary. While Congress was debating the tax cuts signed into law by Trump in 2017, Republicans floated a plan that would have taxed most universities on their endowment income — but exempted schools that didn’t take federal aid. Democrats were able to kill the exemption, which they dubbed “the Hillsdale carve-out.” Trump’s vice president, Mike Pence, delivered the 2018 commencement address at the Michigan campus.

A month after losing the 2020 election, Trump named Arnn chairman of his Advisory 1776 Commission, which Trump created during the campaign to combat “left-wing indoctrination in our schools,” according to The New York Times. An official with Hillsdale’s Washington, D.C., satellite campus was named executive director of the commission.

College officials couldn’t be reached for comment about the Placer land purchase. Nor could Kyriakos Tsakopoulos, the son of Angelo Tsakopoulos and head of the University Development Foundation.

The Sacramento Bee first reported more than a year ago on Hillsdale’s negotiations with the University Development Foundation. The land purchase, completed in November by a college affiliate called HC Real Estate Holding Inc., was first reported by the Sacramento Business Journal.

Placer has sought college project for years

Placer officials are operating on a parallel track with Sacramento State.

In July, California State University, Sacramento, announced that it had accepted the donation of 300 acres of land from the developer of the proposed Placer Ranch project north of Roseville and west of Rocklin. The land is worth $27 million, represents the single largest gift in Sacramento State history and is earmarked for a major campus the university will build in partnership with Sierra College.

And now Hillsdale has taken control of an 1,100-acre parcel, immediately west of Roseville, that’s been the subject of considerable scrutiny for decades.

Although some environmental groups have blasted the project as a kind of subterfuge — a scheme to build more houses on open space — county officials and the Tsakopoulos family have long argued that the campus would enhance Placer’s economy and way of life. The county OK’d the project in the early 2000s.

A Catholic religious order was in talks to build a campus on the site but walked away in 2005 because of delays in approvals. A few years later, the Tsakopoulos family and other property owners donated the land to the newly-created University Development Foundation as a means of keeping the college pursuit going.

Drexel University of Philadelphia then stepped in, and went so far as to open a graduate school in Old Sacramento as a starting point for the larger project in Placer. But Drexel abandoned the Placer site and closed the Old Sacramento campus in 2015.

Next up was England’s Warwick University, whose governing board approved a 6,000-student campus on the Placer land in 2017. But Warwick bailed out, too, in part because of political complications created by Brexit — the United Kingdom’s departure from the European Union.

Hillsdale’s land purchase takes the project closer to fruition than ever, said Weygandt, who has toured the main campus in Michigan and met with college officials.

While it’s not clear what form the campus will take, “I’m certain they’re very committed,” the supervisor said.

He said about two-thirds of the land, totaling 650 acres, has been earmarked for the campus. Hillsdale is looking for a development partner to take charge of the remaining land, which would be devoted to commercial and residential use, he said.

Hillsdale had been talking about opening a small satellite campus in the old Tower Theatre in downtown Roseville in addition to the Placer campus. However, it’s not clear to go forward with the Roseville site, said Deputy City Manager Megan McPherson.

This story was originally published December 29, 2021 at 5:00 AM.