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Originally Posted by bejazd
Thanks for the background info. So it sounds like this was not a plan to rid the campus of greek housing, but an unintended consequence of re-zoning for higher density residential or mixed use commercial/res that would generate more tax dollars. is that more or less correct?
so what happened to the fraternity houses at Texas that did close? were they able to sell? were the properties bulldozed for new construction?
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You are correct- it was not any kind of attempt to get rid of the Greeks. The fact is that if a building at UT has a name on it, that person was likely Greek here. So we are given our due accord in the end.
The real problem is that UT houses around 3% of its 50,000+ students on campus. And there has been incredible financial pressure on off-campus housing prices given a general boom in Austin real estate which is driven in the long term by city growth.
The city realized that it is important for West Campus to house a significant number of UT students- and the new zoning was created with the specific hope that the result would be room for 10,000 more students to live there. And West Campus- as defined by the rezoning- is about 9 blocks long and 6 blocks wide.
In the short term there are a lot of brand new complexes being built which are incredibly expensive ($700-800 per bedroom per month), but as those buildings age and more complexes are built the rent will come down.
As the rent comes down, the speculative value of undeveloped land in West Campus will come down- but for now it creates what I see as a 2-3 year squeeze on any fraternity or sorority that is renting or seeking to build a house.
That said, in the long run the land will be much more valuable than before in any market since you have a ready-made set of residents (UT students) and so Greek housing as we know it at UT is destined to change for all but those houses where the average member does not care what it costs to be a member or live in the house.
With respect to sororities- I think 7-8 houses fit that description. For fraternities- the number is closer to 5.
The rest will be in more condo-like settings within 10 years in my view.
Just about every fraternity or sorority house that has sold here in the past 2-3 years has been bulldozed. And right now there is just one in play and it is under contract pending a negotiation for new tenants vs redevelopment.
In case you are interested- the old Gamma Phi Beta house is being torn down right now. Gamma Phi left UT in the late 1980s and Lambda Chi took over that property after a brief hiatus from campus since the mid 1980s when they sold a prime location property next to SAE which is now House of Tutors.
Lambda Chi sold that house in 1992 to a local developer who was a Delta Upsilon at UT and bought his own fraternity house in the 1990s to turn into a dorm (which later became a second house for KA and is now the site of a huge new apartment complex near completion.)
From 1992 until recently the old Gamma Phi house was a women's dorm and when I was in West Campus 2 weeks ago I noticed they were tearing it down- and I assume that land will soon be a new high rise apartment complex.
Greek Life won't die here- but for all but a very few top houses a new reality is coming in how we exist. And I think that new reality is high rise condo-style houses on small plots of land which can be readily converted into rental property at times when a chapter has financial difficulties.
But any way you look at it- the number of traditional WASP Greek organizations living in large houses has dropped and will continue to do so.
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