University leaders broke ground on the school’s new Greek Village Friday and spoke on plans for how the redevelopment will take place.
Phase one of the project will begin in April with new roadways, sidewalks and parking lots, while construction of new fraternity houses will begin shortly after. Four fraternities — Sigma Nu, Sigma Phi Epsilon, Kappa Sigma and Chi Psi — have already pledged the initial amount of money needed for construction.
The Village could take 10 to 15 years to complete, as some of the fraternities and sororities are hesitant to jump on board, primarily for monetary reasons.
“Once the first four get built, I think everyone else will jump on board,” Tim Luckadoo, an associate vice chancellor of Student Affairs, said.
That’s what happened at the University of South Carolina, the model for the new village. According to Luckadoo, NCSU wanted a model in which organizations can lease the land from the University. South Carolina introduced this model.
“Our groups really wanted to build on University land,” Luckadoo said. “We talked to the South Carolina people for a while and got really excited about it.”
According to John Mountz, director of Greek Life, work on the houses will begin shortly after phase one begins; each house costs between $2.5 million and $4 million.
“They should be about 15,000 to 20,000 square feet each and hold about 30 to 40 residents,” Mountz said.
One of the main advantages of the village, mentioned during the groundbreaking ceremony, is its location. It will still be in the Fraternity Court area, but with the growth of Centennial Campus, the village will sit right in between the two campuses.
“It’s a spot that’s really right in the heart of the two campuses,” Mountz said. “We have a plan with transportation to have the bus route run right through the village.”
The University constructed Fraternity Court in the 1960s, and one complaint then was that it seemed disconnected from campus, according to Luckadoo.
“It seemed so far away from main campus then. But now, it’s perfect,” he said.
Members of the Board of Trustees and many of the University’s executive officers attended the groundbreaking ceremony, and many of them noted the work that the Greek Court Redevelopment Task Force had done.
That Task Force first convened in May of 2006 and presented recommendations to the Trustees in October of that year.
“The perception that Greek Life is dying is simply false,” Erik Peterson, the president of Kappa Sigma fraternity, said during the ceremony. “Today is evidence of that.”
