Oral Roberts Medical Center For Sale

TULSA, Okla. - The three golden skyscrapers, each embossed with the sign of the cross and called the City of Faith, tower over South Tulsa.

Divinely inspired and created by television evangelist Oral Roberts as a hospital, medical school and clinic, this was to be the place where modern medicine met the healing of faith, a place where miracles may have fixed what doctors could not.

Instead, it met hard times, becoming little more than an empty shell waiting for the highest bidder.

The 50-acre medical complex, which once led Roberts to tell his followers that his life would end unless they sent donations for medical-school scholarships, will be offered for sale by sealed bids, according to Oral Roberts University officials and two real-estate brokers hired to sell the facility.

More than 90 percent of the complex, which cost $150 million to construct, is vacant, since its medical school, hospital and clinic closed in 1989. A sole tenant, Cancer Care of America of Zion, Ill., holds a 30-year lease. And more than $240,000 in overdue property taxes and $10 million in mortgages are owed.

The auction is the latest example of financial woes besetting television evangelists since Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart became mired in national scandals during the past decade. The scandals created what Roberts has called a "spirit of skepticism," causing contributions to plummet.

In 1989, Roberts' organization had lost nearly half of its

contributions over a two-year period, donations declining from $5 million to $2.7 million.

University officials tried to lease the complex after the medical school and hospital were closed, but Oral Roberts University lacked the capital to renovate space according to tenant needs. With only one tenant and part of the complex deemed taxable because it no longer housed the ministry's non-profit programs, officials decided in 1991 to sell the complex. An Oklahoma company offered to buy the property but was unable to put the deal together by a July deadline.

Now the university hopes to attract bidders from around the world, setting no reserve or minimum price for the sale. Bids will be accepted at the end of October and opened Dec. 10. The university reserves the right to review, accept or reject all offers. Contracts may be on a cash or terms basis, brokers said.

The office vacancy rate in South Tulsa is 18 percent, while top-of-the-line, modern buildings average about 12 percent. There has been no construction of speculative office space since 1986.

"From our standpoint, a user is a user," Mark W. Swadener, chief financial officer of Roberts' organization, said. "A lot of people think this space is only for medical, but it was built as an office complex."

No matter how the complex may be used in the future, any new buyer will be getting some lofty history.

In 1977, Roberts took to a California desert after the death of his daughter and her husband. While there, Roberts has said, God told him to build the complex, which was originally intended to be a medical school, hospital and research lab. The idea was to offer prayer medicine, a mix of medical treatment and spiritual belief. The heavenly directive was followed by a vision of a 900-foot tall Jesus.

But the hospital was never able to attract enough out-of-state patients to make the complex profitable. Contributions to the ministry dwindled in the midst of the Bakker and Swaggart scandals, despite Roberts' warning that his life would end. And state health-care programs stopped reimbursing hospitals fully for services to indigent patients.

Most of the space in the three towers, which are 60, 30 and 20 stories high, remained vacant despite a 777-bed capacity. The complex's highest average occupancy was 148 in 1984. Once debt-free, the university later mortgaged the complex.