Chapter House SoldBrothers,
Unfortunately, I have some unpleasant news. After 2+ years of efforts by our volunteer group, the chapter house at 128 Collingwood Ave appears to have been sold with conditions to a 3rd party real estate investor.
Over the past few years, the Gamma Omicron volunteer alumni group had been trying to negotiate with LCAP, and raise money amongst our group to purchase the chapter. While brothers generously pledged nearly $100,000, that was not enough for the down payment, needed renovations, and operating reserves to run and manage the chapter house. When those efforts were exhausted, the group attempted to partner with third party investors. When an agreement was made with an investor, unfortunately their financing on the deal fell through at the last minute.
Efforts were made with Lambda Chi Alpha Properties to allow our group to find separate investors, but unfortunately we were unable to find additional financing before LCAP moved forward with other offers.
A re-zoning meeting will be held on February 24th in East Lansing for the new investor to rezone or allow the ability to build new additions on the property for apartment housing. We are attempting to provide as much support in this meeting to dissuade these activities from occurring.
We as a chapter have a few options. The first would be to re-establish new housing in a temporary location. There are other fraternity houses for rent currently in East Lansing. Secondly, we can identify a location to purchase or rebuild our chapter in East Lansing. In my thoughts and hopefully many others, the option of letting our chapter fold is not something that would be followed through on.
Our chapter has been at MSU for nearly 88 years, while inhabiting 128 Collingwood for nearly 83 of those years. Gamma Omicron is considered one of the leading chapters in Lambda Chi Alpha nationally for initiated members. We are a leader in the Greek community on the MSU campus and amongst all volunteer organizations. We are hoping our past accomplishments and current support of the undergraduates and alumni will be enough to reestablish residence and allow this chapter to be a leader for the future.
Thank you for all of your support, and feel free to contact me with any additional questions.
Yours in ZAX,
Steve Arndt
GO 1935
Steve.arndt@gmail.com 773-225-3656
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