Olivet University - In Progress ....still...

As you drive out of New York towards Mass and the covered bridges of Connecticut, if you take 22, you pass a group of fascinating buildings.

There is a small sign that this is Olivet University. This is misleading.

Olivet University is a small Christian College in San Francisco. It is not a traditional “Christian” school, as it is a member of the “Evangelical Presbyterian Churches of America” which is a South Korean ministry unaffiliated with the mainline Presbyterians.

The University is opening regional campuses, and found the closed buildings of Harlem Valley Psychiatric Hospital north of Brewster NY. They purchased them in 2013. They spent a year or so redoing them to remove asbestos and lead paint to make them habitable. (Odd that a Psychiatric Hospital had so much deadly ingredients.)

Then the story goes sideways. Olivet stopped the reconstruction and pulled out. Then they worked with IBT Media (International Business Times), and have been the subject of multiple lawsuits. Most around money laundering and insider trading - mainly revolving around founder Rev David J Jang. It’s all confusing, but the upshot is that these buildings have sat, empty since 1990s, refurbished a bit in 2014 and silent since.

They are quite spooky, if you are into that.