Correction: In 2014, Burlington College's accreditation was placed on suspension for financial reasons. An earlier version of this story misstated the nature of the discipline.

Jane O'Meara Sanders had an ambitious vision for Burlington College.

Sanders, wife of 2016 presidential candidate and Vermont senator Bernie Sanders, described herself when she was hired in 2004 as a "turnaround president." She orchestrated the college's move from a small, cramped campus to an expansive lakefront property in 2010.

The sprawling green would give students space to relax. The small private college could have built dorms, townhouses and single homes on the 32-acre property. Some property could have been leased, perhaps to a restaurant or cafe. There could have been space for weddings, outdoor movies or afternoon tea with a chamber music accompaniment — all with stunning views of Lake Champlain and the Adirondacks.

Five years after Jane Sanders left — after significant board turnover and three college presidents — Burlington College, and her vision, collapsed under "the crushing weight of debt."

The Burlington College story unfolded over more than a decade of growth and struggle:

2004 : Jane Sanders is hired as president and announces a goal to improve the school's financial health. The presidential search committee had said it wanted a candidate with proven fundraising experience.

: Jane Sanders is hired as president and announces a goal to improve the school's financial health. The presidential search committee had said it wanted a candidate with proven fundraising experience. December 2010 : Under Sanders' leadership, Burlington College purchases a new lakefront campus for $10 million.

: Under Sanders' leadership, Burlington College purchases a new lakefront campus for $10 million. October 2011 : Ten months after the property purchase, Sanders resigns, citing "different visions for the future" with the board of trustees.

: Ten months after the property purchase, Sanders resigns, citing "different visions for the future" with the board of trustees. June 2014 : The college's accreditation is in jeopardy due to financial troubles.

: The college's accreditation is in jeopardy due to financial troubles. January 2016 : A Republican attorney accuses Jane O'Meara Sanders of bank fraud related to the property purchase. He later says Sen. Bernie Sanders improperly pressured People's United Bank to approve the loan.

: A Republican attorney accuses Jane O'Meara Sanders of bank fraud related to the property purchase. He later says Sen. Bernie Sanders improperly pressured People's United Bank to approve the loan. May 2016: Burlington College shuts down under the burden of debt from the property deal.

Little remains today of the now-defunct college. Federal authorities, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the U.S. Attorney's Office, are investigating the 2010 property deal that Sanders orchestrated. A local Republican attorney has accused Sanders of bank fraud.

About 150 boxes of orphaned Burlington College records were taken by the State Agency of Education — minutes of board of trustees meetings, facility information, student transcripts, enrollment inquiries and SAT scores.

Agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation looked through the records and took everything they needed for their inquiry, according to emails obtained through a public records request. On March 30, the state shredded everything that remained except for student academic records.

Sanders, who denies wrongdoing, has said she left Burlington College in a hopeful financial condition.

"There were no problems when I left. It was great. It was poised for soaring," Sanders said in a 2015 interview with the Burlington Free Press during her husband's presidential campaign. "I have no doubt that had we worked out a good transition plan, or had I stayed, that it would have been wonderful."

The final piece of the Burlington College property was sold in a foreclosure auction last week, and the former campus is slated to become a housing development and park. The large red Burlington College roadside sign was recently taken down.

One poster in the window of a former campus building attests to the college's non-traditional spirit. It reads, "Taking the road less traveled."

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Sanders was hired to lead Burlington College in 2004. She had previously served a one-year stint as interim president of Goddard College in Plainfield, Vermont, and was running her own political and higher-education consulting firm. Sanders has described her style as president as "entrepreneurial," and when she left in 2011 said the board of trustees had a different approach.

Adam Dantzscher, who was chairman of the board of trustees at the time, declined to comment.

Jeff Weaver, a spokesman for the Sanders family, provided a memo dated October 2011 that Sanders wrote to the Burlington College board of trustees to recount the accomplishments of her seven-year tenure.

"In recent years, we have achieved the highest rating for financial responsibility that the U.S. Department of Education provides," Sanders wrote, later adding that her administration had managed finances through "smart money management" rather than budget cuts.

Read the full memo here.

Sanders declined to comment further Thursday on the plans that she said were discarded after she left.

"I felt, to the detriment of the school, that the development plan wasn't implemented, the plan for the college," Sanders said in the 2015 interview. "Everything that we said, ‘We’ll do this, this, this, this, this’ — nothing happened."

A $10 million dream

For Burlington College, it was a golden opportunity.

Students complained about the lack of an outdoor college campus and gathering spaces at the old two-acre property.

Burlington College commissioned architectural drawings for a new building — but then learned that the Roman Catholic Diocese of Burlington would sell its 32-acre lakefront property just down the road at a "comparable expense."

"We decided to change our plans," wrote Sanders and Christine Plunkett, the chief financial officer at the time, when they applied for tax-exempt bond financing for the purchase from the Vermont Educational and Health Buildings Finance Agency in 2010.

The purchase price was $10 million, about half of the property's assessed value.

It was a bold step for the tiny college with an endowment of $100,784, annual revenue of approximately $3.6 million, and 192 students.

The new property purchase would be financed with a $3.65 million mortgage from the Roman Catholic Diocese of Burlington and $6.7 million tax-exempt bonds, which would be purchased by People's United Bank.

The college would pay back its new debt through a major capital campaign and by more than doubling student enrollment to 400 students over four years.

"The projections for enrollment are very conservative," the college leaders wrote.

The $2 million question mark

At the heart of the property deal was a list of donations, including $2.6 million in confirmed money and another $2.5 million in unconfirmed pledges.

The list included $2 million that never materialized.

"At this time, we have a firm commitment of $1 million from one donor and a verbal commitment for an additional $1 million from another donor," Sanders and Plunkett wrote in the financing application.

In a report this year, VTDigger.org identified the confirmed $1 million donor, listed on college documents as "CBM," as Corinne Bove Maietta.

In the 2010 financing application, Sanders and Plunkett said Maietta pledged to give $1 million over the next seven years.

Maietta said in an interview with VTDigger.org, however, that it was a bequest upon her death and not a donation. Maietta said she gave less than $100,000 in donations.

"You can't borrow money on the future," Maietta said, according to the report. "That doesn’t exist."

The college's financial audit on June 30, 2011 appears to confirm that the pledge was an estate gift.

The second $1 million "verbal commitment," listed in the bond application under the initials "TP," was a matching donation from Tony Pomerleau. His gift was contingent on the college receiving $1 million from another donor.

"I said, 'When you get that million dollars, I'll match it,'" Pomerleau, the 99-year-old Burlington real estate magnate and philanthropist, said in a phone interview this week. The Pomerleau promise was a handshake deal with Sanders. Pomerleau said he never signed a written commitment.

The first million dollars never materialized, Pomerleau supposed, because neither Sanders nor anyone else from the college approached him to complete the matching donation.

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Reached Thursday, Sanders confirmed that she had listed Pomerleau as "TP" for $1 million on the college's list of potential donors.

Sanders declined to comment on the "CBM" donation.

Michael Luck, a fundraising consultant for Burlington College at the time, did not return two phone messages seeking an interview, nor did Plunkett, the chief financial officer at the time who later served as president of the college.

Deal approved

The financing agency VEHBFA reviewed the Burlington College proposal in 2010 and held a public hearing in Winooski, a nearby city, about the financing plan. No members of the public offered any comment.

Charly Dickerson, one of the board members for VEHBFA, opposed the deal out of concern about the college's ability to repay the debt, according to minutes of the meeting. Another member, Thomas Pelham, opposed it because he was concerned that the property deal was a "fire sale."

The majority of the financing agency board voted to issue $6.7 million in bonds and to certify "that the College appears that it will have sufficient revenue to repay the bonds and the interest thereon when due." Gov. Jim Douglas, a Republican, signed off on the board's recommendation.

Pomerleau agreed to provide a $500,000 bridge loan to help Burlington College purchase the new property. Pomerleau said in an interview that he loaned the money to People's United Bank at the bank's request.

Matt Mahoney, the underwriter of the Burlington College loan at People's United Bank, now works at a different bank and declined to comment. A spokeswoman for People's United Bank also declined to comment.

Jack Bergeron, a Burlington attorney listed as Burlington College's counsel in the bond application, also declined to comment, other than to say that no federal investigators had contacted him.

Sanders and college leaders planned a five-year, $6 million capital campaign to support the property deal, and considered fundraising to be going so well that they might set a more ambitious target.

"With more than one third of this total currently pledged, the total goal may be increased prior to announcing the public phase of the campaign," Sanders and Plunkett wrote in the application.

The property deal was finalized on December 31, 2010.

The collapse

The college struggled financially after Sanders parted ways with the institution in October 2011.

In her goodbye memo to the board of trustees, Sanders wrote that the college had "realized" gift and grant commitments of nearly $1.7 million over the last year, and another $1.25 million was on the books for the future. Many of the donors, like Pomerleau, had personal relationships with Sanders.

"For all these donors, the handling of this transition is crucial," Sanders wrote.

Sanders also suggested that Burlington College pursue opportunities for additional revenue and property deals. She was working to sell a nine-acre southernmost parcel of the college property to a "well-respected financial services firm" connected through the Greater Burlington Industrial Corporation.

The potential sale would bring in $7 million to $10 million, Sanders wrote — potentially enough to pay off Burlington College's $6.7 million debt from tax-exempt bonds or even to cover the entire debt.

Read the full memo here.

Plunkett, the chief fiscal officer, stepped into interim leadership, and while she was busy with administrative responsibilities the college struggled to keep up with financial record-keeping, according to a letter by Plunkett attached to the fiscal year 2012 audit published online by VTDigger.org.

"Due to these transitions and staffing challenges, there was little success with fundraising or enrollment growth during the year," Plunkett wrote. She was appointed president in June 2012. About two years later, college fundraising efforts remained on a back burner.

Gains in student enrollment did not materialize, and the school's accreditation was placed on suspension for financial reasons in 2014.

In July 2014, Burlington College obtained a $250,000 loan from a subsidiary of the Vermont Economic Development Authority.

"It was a loan that we were clear from the start was a risky loan," said Jo Bradley, VEDA's chief executive officer. Bradley said the college repaid some of the loan, but not all, and no collateral now remains.

Plunkett resigned in public, unexpectedly, during a September 2014 confrontation with protesting students. Michael Smith became interim president, then the college hired Carol Moore.

The following February, Burlington College sold 27.5 acres of its property to developer Eric Farrell for $7.65 million in an effort to stay afloat.

In March 2015, shortly before Bernie Sanders held a news conference to announce his presidential campaign, a news outlet, the Daily Caller, raised questions about the pledged donations at Burlington College and suggested that Jane O'Meara Sanders may have defrauded the state bonding agency and the bank.

The allegations lingered through the next year, and in January 2016 a Republican attorney, Brady Toensing, asked federal authorities to investigate the finances underlying the property deal, which he said amounted to bank fraud. Toensing also alleged that Bernie Sanders' U.S. Senate office may have pressured the bank for financing, an allegation both Bernie Sanders and Jane O'Meara Sanders have denied.

"My wife is about the most honest person I know," the senator said in a recent CNN interview.

As the college struggled, the estate of a former faculty member filed a lawsuit, alleging that the college misused a $70,000 gift that was meant to be used for student scholarships.

After a settlement, the estate of G. Jason Conway held a $70,000 mortgage on Burlington College property, but now no longer expects to be repaid, said Norm Blais, the attorney representing the Conway estate.

More:Donor sues Burlington College, alleges misused money

"It's a very sad chapter for my client," Blais said in a recent interview.

Blais said the executor of the Conway estate, Marjorie Lemay, has been contacted by the FBI as part of the ongoing federal investigation into the college. A phone number for Lemay could not be found.

In April 2016, People's United Bank declined to renew the college's $1 million line of credit, and the New England Association of Schools and Colleges moved to fully revoke Burlington College's accreditation.

College leaders announced in May 2016 that the college had buckled under "the crushing weight of debt."

As the dust settled, Moore, the college's final president, wrote a letter to the Chronicle of Higher Education that placed the blame for the school's failure directly on Jane O'Meara Sanders and the trustees who hired her.

Moore wrote that the property purchase was an "appallingly inappropriate business deal" that should have gotten more scrutiny.

Yves Bradley, chairman of the most recent Burlington College board of trustees, did not respond to two voicemail messages seeking comment on Wednesday and Thursday.

When her husband was running for president, Sanders continued to argue that Burlington College could have succeeded with its property purchase.

"Watch what the developer that bought the land does with it," Sanders said in August 2015, shortly after Burlington College sold part of its campus to Farrell, "and you will see how much money he will make and how much money the college could have made doing similar-type things."

Free Press Staff Writer Emilie Stigliani contributed reporting.

Contact April McCullum at 802-660-1863 or amccullum@freepressmedia.com. Follow her on Twitter at @April_McCullum.

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