Councillors called to an emergency meeting to discuss the future of Rossington Hall School were stunned to discover the decision to sell the site had been made a year ago by the mayor and cabinet.
Members of the economy and enterprise scrutiny panel met on Tuesday to hear a plea from tenant, the Northern Racing College, against selling the land.
Only after a report from NRC spokesman Jim Gale on proposals for a new international horse-theme
d tourist attraction on the estate, provisionally called the St Leger Horse Park, were members advised they had almost no influence on Rossington Hall's future.
Alistair Burg, the council's group director of strategic asset management, told shocked councillors the decision to sell had been taken in February 2007 and the expected income generated by the sale had already been accounted for in the council's five-year capital spending programme.
He said a reversal of the decision would scupper other council projects.
Mr Gale, chairman of the South Yorkshire Training Trust, the charity which runs the college, said he had made repeated requests to the council to hear his plans for the country park but until Tuesday his pleas had been ignored.
He had hoped members would consider leasing the hall and additional land to the college at a peppercorn rent to enable their renovation of the grade two listed building which is currently in use as a school for children with special needs.
Despite holding a 99-year lease on the 58 acres currently rented from the council, Mr Gale raised concerns that the college's plans, which would celebrate Doncaster's racing heritage and form part of an "equine cluster", would be jeopardised by any sale to a new private landlord.
"It's better the devil you know," he said.
Although most members were impressed with the college's ambitions, the majority voted to support the council's sale of the hall with an additional recommendation that the decision to sell would be reconsidered if the property failed to reach the asking price.
Only Independent councillor Tony Brown backed the NRC's request for the council to retain the asset.
He said: "It is a travesty that we are going to sell it when the profile the St Leger Horse Park could bring to Doncaster could be enormous."
Rossington Hall Special School remains open until the end of this school year when it will close as part of an overhaul of special needs education in Doncaster that will see two new schools built and three more refurbishsed to replace the seven exisiting schools.
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