The former Phi Delta Theta house at 15th Avenue and Kincaid Street has been reincarnated this summer into a dormitory-style boarding house named The Spot.
Now seeking applicants, The Spot will offer 31 single rooms for $630 a month. Rent at the newly remodeled co-ed house will include a daily food program, utilities and cleaning services.
Steve Frichette, who is leasing the property from the University’s greek system, said the opening of The Spot is a sign of a shift in the area’s housing market, which is seeing many students snubbing fraternities and sororities for other dormitory-style houses.
A University Law School graduate who’s been involved in the greek system since 1984, Frichette said he would rather house a fraternity in the 1960s-style building. But low membership has kept it vacant. In 1999, the University’s Phi Delta Theta chapter closed because of low enrollment, and last year, Delta Sigma Phi moved to a smaller house for the same reason, he said.
“There were 32 pledges in my class in 1984,” Frichette said. “Now you’re lucky to get 16. All the numbers are cut in half.”
He cited two reasons for low enrollment at the fraternities he housed and advised: the University’s prohibition of alcohol in some greek houses and poor marketing. The University required Phi Delta Theta to go dry before the fraternity folded, and, except for occasional University-funded advertisements, individual greek houses are responsible for recruitment.
Shelley Sutherland, the coordinator of Greek Life, agreed that the time commitment of recruitment is daunting, but she said the school’s 15 fraternities and 9 sororities are seeing as many pledges this summer as they did in the past few years.
“I don’t think being in the fraternity or sorority is a problem, but it’s living in the buildings that is,” she said. “Not all the fraternity and sorority houses are as nice, fixed up and modern as some of the apartment complexes.”
In recent years, four greek houses have closed down and two have opened. About 2,000 students live in fraternities and sororities, a number that has held steady but is relatively low compared to peer universities.
Sutherland said the greek system’s stiffest competition is the cluster of apartment buildings near Autzen Stadium.
Also, a handful of group-living options near the University are offering the camaraderie that fraternities and sororities tout.
Residents in the Student Cooperative Association, which owns three former greek houses near 16th Avenue and Alder Street, split bills and chores to cut the cost of group living. A handful of former fraternity and sorority houses in the area have been converted to religious boarding houses.
The Collegian at 18th Avenue and Alder Street houses 43 rooms and is run much like the University’s residence halls at a cost similar to the University Inn.
Megan Lee, the operations manager at The Collegian, said that because there is so much demand for off-campus group living, she doesn’t expect much competition between The Spot and The Collegian.
“People like the smaller group environment,” she said. “There’s enough of a need to go around.”