On September 22, 1972, the school received from the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare, for payment of $1, a 5 acres site in Astoria that had formerly been the U.S. Army Pictorial Center, with the intention of moving the college to a campus on the new site, but when the city's budget crisis hit in 1974, the site had to be sold off, as the expense of maintaining it in the interim was too high.