College secures Alpha Phi house

By Angie Cho

Published on Wednesday, March 2, 2011

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College officials secured 2 North Park St. as the site for Alpha Phi sorority’s physical plant — which is expected to open in Fall 2012 — last week, according to Kristi Clemens, acting director for Greek Letter Organizations and Societies. Although Alpha Phi came to campus five years ago, the College’s recent budget cuts and recent zoning issues previously prohibited the acquisition of a physical plant for the sorority, Clemens said.

Construction will begin in Fall 2011, according to Director of Residential Operations Woody Eckels.

“The Fall 2012 completion date is reasonable considering the planning, permitting and other work that must be done before construction can begin,” Alpha Phi president Joanne Nurse ’11 said in an e-mail to The Dartmouth.

The new Alpha Phi house will be a college-owned property and will be funded by the Office of Residential Life, according to April Thompson, associate dean of the College for campus life.

The apartment building that currently stands on the property houses 12 tenants — including students, faculty and staff — who have all been notified of the development, according to Clemens.

Both the property and the apartment building are owned by the College’s Real Estate Office and are monetarily part of the endowment.

As a result, the building renovation will simply be “shifting money from one department to another,” Clemens said.

“This is a commitment that the College made several years ago to Alpha Phi when they became a recognized student organization — to provide a physical space for them,” Thompson said. “The Residential Life Office has done a tremendous amount of work and put in a lot of resources into making this facility possible for the women of Alpha Phi.”

College officials had originally identified a space in July 2008 at 26 East Wheelock Street where they could establish a physical plant for Alpha Phi, according to Clemens.

Since that time, the zoning rules in Hanover changed so the location was no longer viable. Although 26 East Wheelock was earlier considered an “institutional” zone, Dartmouth was notified in December that the space had become residential and could no longer house a sorority, Clemens said.

The new location at 2 North Park Street is within institutional zoning, according to Eckels.

“It’s something that we still need to get permits for, but [a sorority house] is the kind of use that’s expected in that area,” Eckels said.

Dartmouth does not expect to have any trouble obtaining the necessary permits considering the proximity of the Alpha Xi Delta sorority physical plant on 17 East Wheelock, Eckels said.The preparation for the site will require an extended period of time, however, because the College would like to give the current apartment tenants approximately six month’s notice to allow them time to acquire new housing, according to Eckels.

“Even if we rushed and immediately hired a contractor, the earliest I can see us opening the house is sophomore Summer of 2012 and there’s no advantage in that option,” Eckels said.

Now that a space has been identified, GLOS and the Alpha Phi housing committee will work in conjunction with an architectural firm to design the building, according to Clemens. The Office of Planning, Design and Construction will consider bids from various construction companies in the area to see which option would be the most cost and time efficient, Clemens said.

Linda Kahangi, executive director of Alpha Phi International Fraternity, said she predicts that the national organization will be involved with the project even though the physical plant will be College-owned.

Alpha Phi national hopes to establish a local group of alumni through the sorority’s Housing Board to help manage the facilities, she said.

“We’re thrilled by this new development,” Kahangi said. “I think generally Dartmouth has been supportive of their groups and have followed through on their commitments.”

Nurse said she is “extremely excited” about the new house.

“I think that Alpha Phi has been very successful during recruitment, however, I do think that having a house would be a positive asset for us during the recruitment process,” she said.

After the renovations at 2 North Park Street are complete, Kappa Delta sorority will be the only sorority on campus without a physical plant.

“The leadership of [KD] know that we were committed to Alpha Phi first since they’ve been on campus for a few years [longer than KD], but I imagine we will begin the same conversation with [KD] soon,” Clemens said.