AURORA, NY (WHCU) – Some Cayuga County residents would like to see Wells College preserved and reopened.

More than 600 people have signed a petition asking the state to purchase the 300-acre campus in Aurora and ensure it remains a higher education institution in some capacity while blocking any private or commercial development on the lakefront property.

Specifically, the petition, addressed to New York State Attorney General Letitia James and Governor Kathy Hochul, calls for the state to buy the college to resolve any financial debts and keep the school open for the next three years to allow current students to finish their degrees. Plans for the institution’s future would be developed during this time.

The signees also want to turn the land over to the Cayuga Nation’s Traditional Council of Chiefs who make up the Ten Cayuga Clan families of the Haudenosaunee. Aurora and the site where the college was founded was a native village destroyed as part of the U.S. government’s Sullivan military campaign in 1779 during the Revolutionary War.

Find out more here.