Serious plans for the addition of a Greek Village to Southeast’s campus began last fall, when structural issues including roof leaks and mold were found in the Greystone estate, according to assistant vice president for student success and auxiliary services Bruce Skinner.
"The Greek Village discussion really developed because of the Shivelbine and Greystone properties. We were going to do some renovations to Greystone. We were then, in the future, looking to do some stuff at Shivelbine, and in the process of that, took a step back and said 'OK, these were houses built for families, not for 20-plus people to live in.'”
The university administration saw interest from students and alumni in expanding Greek housing, and during the Board of Regents meeting in December, the board approved hiring Jan Burgess from Hollis + Miller Architects to create conceptual designs and create site plans to explore other uses for the area that housed Greystone and Shivelbine.
"What the architect was tasked with doing was really, at a certain price point, showing us some options of what a house could look like, independent of what organization and what each person might want their chapter tailored to. Just show what this amount of money would buy."
Skinner adds that Burgess and university administrators will meet with the individual chapters that are considering building houses and customize the designs to fit their particular organization.
"We want the houses to be unique in the sense that when the members of that chapter look at it, they say 'Our house is different than the one from Sigma Phi Epsilon,' but not so different that as an institution we have different mechanical systems, different structural systems, because in the end they are still university-owned houses on university property, and so we have an obligation to both manage them and to make sure they are built consistent with university expectations."
The university will construct, manage and own the buildings, with each house being leased to the chapter and their alumni organization.
"This will be a self-funding project, so the cost for that are not bore by students that aren't Greek, they're not bore by students that are Greek but don't live over there. They're bore by the students and the alumni that have that house."
Skinner said Burgess estimated that the cost of each house would be around $2 million, with up to seven houses able to be built on the current property. Currently four chapters have shown interest, but Skinner said that other chapters could join the project in a next phase.
Skinner also said he thinks this plan will come to fruition because of it being a more scaled down version of Greek Village.
"The last Greek plan that we looked at was really, for lack of a better word, replacing Greek housing and moving it somewhere else. We were going to build a village concept, which would be great, but that means everybody in the Greek area moved."
The previous plans required the university to build buildings before they knew if it could fill them. Skinner says that adding the leasing component has fundamentally changed the project, despite continued skepticism from students and alumni.
The project has continued to move forward at Southeast. Greystone was demolished on March 16 to make way for the new project, with Shivelbine scheduled for demolition in the near future.
The final plans and financial documents for the Greek Village will be presented to the Board of Regents for approval in May.