Former Indus School campus listed for $1.7 million in Baudette

The former Indus School campus in Baudette has been put up for sale at $1.7 million, opening a new chapter for a property that once anchored education, athletics and vocational training near the Minnesota-Canada border. The listing puts all 49 acres, a 69,000-square-foot school building and a 28,000-square-foot hockey arena back into play, and the next buyer could shape whether the site becomes a community asset, a private enterprise or another long-term vacancy in northern Minnesota.

The campus closed after the South Koochiching-Rainy River School District voted 4-2 on May 31, 2023, to shut down Indus School. District leaders pointed to declining enrollment and a reported $400,000 deficit as they weighed the future of the building, which served students from pre-K through 12th grade. The school officially closed on July 1, 2023, leaving the district’s Northome school as the only remaining building serving a territory of about 1,532 square miles.

The loss was especially stark in a district with about 270 K-12 students in the 2022-23 school year, roughly one-third of whom attended Indus before the closure. Residents organized in opposition as the decision moved forward, and groups including Save Indus and Indus Community Education Development formed to push back and keep attention on the building’s role in the community. In 2024, the Minnesota Court of Appeals ruled the district followed the law in closing the school, settling the legal challenge but not the larger question of what should happen to the campus next.

Barry Woods of Move It Real Estate Group is handling the sale and said he has already fielded numerous calls about the property, including inquiries from dog mushers. The listing goes far beyond a shell building: it includes microscopes, pottery wheels, band equipment and the tools needed for metalworking and building trades, along with the arena’s own Zamboni. Woods has suggested the site could work for manufacturing or equestrian events, while earlier community discussions also raised a treatment center, daycare, assisted living and a summer camp for sports.

For rural communities like Indus and Baudette, the sale is more than a transaction. It is a test of whether a large public campus, built for a school district spread across a vast stretch of Koochiching County, can be adapted to meet new needs after shrinking enrollment and fiscal strain forced one of its two schools to close.