The research foundation’s 5000-square metre headquarters on Throsby Creek at Maryville has been sold, with a substantial part of the multi-million-dollar sale price to be transferred to university coffers as part of the agreement.

The foundation’s chief executive, Brent Jenkins, finishes on December 16 – one of 6 permanent employees and 25 casuals to lose their jobs. The university has begun an international search for a “thought leader in regional communities” to head the new body, which will be known as the Hunter Research Foundation Centre. It will be based within the university’s Faculty of Business and Law, initially at Callaghan but later at the NeWSpace building in Hunter Street. Just four staff will move to the university from Maryville.

In an interview this week, Dr Jenkins said the new university centre would continue with its quarterly economic indicators and the economic breakfasts held to promote them, but the old foundation had too many problems with its business model to continue operating as it was.

“There’s a saying attributed to Einstein that the definition of insanity is doing something over and over again and expecting a different result,” Dr Jenkins said.

He said the research foundation had lost a number of important fee-paying contracts in recent years, and support from its various sponsor organisations had not been enough to bridge the gap.

He said the foundation’s economic difficulties paralleled the broader Hunter economy, which he said was struggling to compete with Sydney.

“We either have to drag opportunities to us, or connect with Sydney more efficiently, or both,” Dr Jenkins said.

The decision to wind up the organisation followed a 2014 restructure, in which it dropped its original name, the Hunter Valley Research Foundation, in an attempt to modernise. At its peak, it had 20 permanent employees and 70 casuals.

“No-one likes to go down the job loss path but joining with the university enables us to embed our core wtithin a bigger structure,” Dr Jenkins said.

Dr Jenkins acknowledged there was a twist of history in the foundation becoming part of the university.

History shows that two University of NSW academics, Cyril Renwick and James Auchmuty, were seconded to the fledgling Newcastle University College in the 1950s. Renwick’s obituary described the pair as rivals.

Auchmuty, the son of an Irish clergyman and a former British MI6 operative, was promoted to history professor and deputy warden of the university college in 1955. He became the University of Newcastle’s inaugural vice-chancellor.

Renwick, an economist, was also a clergyman’s son, but from Gosford. He sensed his opportunity with the great Maitland flood of 1955. The flood had a massive impact on the region and its economy and Renwick threw himself into a project that became the Hunter Valley Research Foundation.

He secured the site at Maryville, and set up shop in a long weatherboard building that had previously stood on what is now Civic Park. That building is still on the Maryville site, but like everything else on the land it will eventually disappear to make way for the medium-density housing development planned by the new owner.

Professor Renwick ran the foundation as director and chairman until he resigned in 1985, having turned the organisation into a highly respected – and highly independent – source of economic information.

Professor Renwick, who died in 2010, was followed by WEJ Paradice, who had arrived as a research officer in 1982 when “‘there was one computer, a lot of debt and a small number of dedicated staff’’.

Dr Paradice introduced the foundation’s quarterly economic breakfasts in 1988 and was responsible for an expansion and change in business plan that saw the organisation move into telephone surveys and other data-gathering, using a “fee-for-service” model to add to its government grants and sponsorships.

But as his successor, Dr Jenkins, commented this week, the market for survey data has changed dramatically in recent years. In 2015 the foundation lost one of its biggest contracts, a household travel survey, that it had done for the NSW government for 18 years.

“The $1 million from that one contract was half of our research income and two-thirds of our profits,” Dr Jenkins said.

“It had helped underpin the business.”

Dr Jenkins said that about 18 months ago the foundation and its board started looking for a “natural partner”.

“It had to be interested in the region, have a research capacity and be not-for-profit, which meant the university was the logical partner,” Dr Jenkins said. He said the foundation’s board of directors would be disbanded, with a new “advisory board” to take its place.

Professor Richard Bush, from the university’s Centre for Balanced Land Use, said the new centre would “secure the long-term investigation and collection of economic and social data in the Hunter”.

“To lead the centre, we are investing in the appointment of a professorial chair who understands regional economics and how different regions across the world have worked to navigate similar economic transitions as our own: regions that are facing the challenges associated with the shift to knowledge-based economies,” Professor Bush said.

The chair of the foundation, Professor Eileen Doyle, said the organisation had faced “a challenging environment”. She said the board applauded “Brett’s determined efforts to rebuild a sustainable business model for the foundation in challenging economic conditions”.

Dr Jenkins said he was not sure what he would be doing next.