They had to move TRBC and his Christian school (Lynchburg Christian Academy? it’s been a while) over onto the LU campus. They couldn’t do any sort of expansion at all. TRBC was basically in the middle of a residential neighborhood with nothing but two-lane surface streets around it, and they had to get six thousand people a service in and out of there, two services, every Sunday.
One other LU thing that Falwell was savvy about was using existing physical plant where he could, to save money. He bought an old manufacturing plant that’s along the Expressway between Candler’s Mountain Road and Odd Fellows Road and set it up as “Liberty University North Campus.” I think he lost it, though, when the school and his ministry got in near-fatal financial trouble during the PTL debacle. Now, of course, LU’s expanded into the old General Electric radio/mobile phone plant on Candler’s Mountain Road and is using that—very smart.
}:-)4
LU also has several hundred acres located between Lynchburg City and Campbell County (most of it in Campbell County) which is in negotiations to be sold to a developer for a lifestyle center mall similar to Short Pump in Richmond. The purchase price is reported to be $100,000-$200,000 per acre.
No matter what the financial difficulties were in the past the school/church seems to have risen above them (with quite a few donations from very generous donors). One of the many who have spoken about him today called him not only a great man of God but also an entreprenarial genius.