Today I met with Vice President of Business and Administration, John Collins, and Associate Vice President of Facilities Management, Joe Buri, regarding estimates for what it would cost to either renovate or rebuild the current chapter house.

An outside firm Wight and Company was brought in to create an estimate for the project.  After an inspection of the building they recommend that the building should be renovated unless the current size does not meet our needs.  The estimated cost for renovation is $85/sf - $130/sf.  Assuming a cost of $120/sf with an estimated size of 12,876 sf of building, the cost to renovate would be about $1.54 million.  The estimated cost for building a new structure of similar size will cost between $170/sf - $220/sf.  At a cost of $220/sf the new building would cost an estimated $2.7 million.  The document from Wight can be downloaded here.

It is my personal recommendation that we build new as the size of the structure does not meet our needs.  Our current rooms are about 30% smaller than the size of dorm rooms in the new State Street Village.  The University is planning on building more dorms of similar design as State Street Village within the next 10 years.  Current capacity for our building is 56 members plus 1 for the RA.  We have not been near capacity in a long time, so by expanding the size of the rooms and reducing the capacity of our building we will provide a better living environment for our members.  Another issue with our current building layout is the positions of the stairwells.  The stairwell placements in the center of the building prevent us from having a large open space in the building.  Whenever we have large events such as Parent's Dinner and Founder's Day we find ourselves crammed into a long and narrow portion of our house.  Both the chapter houses for Phi Kappa Sigma (Skulls) and Delta Tau Delta (Delts) provide large open spaces on their first floor that is very beneficial for having large events within our own chapter house.  A new chapter house will provide us the chance to redesign both the public and private areas of our building to better meet our chapter's needs.

Rick Thompson
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