Kent State to Acquire Vacant Former Frat House for Esplanade Expansion

Land moves involving Kent State University’s Esplanade continue despite the fact the pathway linking campus to downtown itself is largely finished.

Today the university’s board of trustees agreed to a deal with the Delta Upsilon KSU alumni chapter that will eventually see the Kent State Foundation and its roughly 100 staff members relocated into a new facility somewhere in the vicinity of campus.

The agreement between the university and fraternity group will see the vacant former frat house at 202 S. Lincoln St., which is owned by the Delta Upsilon alumni chapter, exchanged for land owned by the university at 1061 Fraternity Circle, a building that currently houses about one third of the foundation staff.

Gregg Floyd, senior vice president for administration and finance at Kent State, said the exchange is critical for the university because it needs the frat house property in order to build the new College of Architecture and Environmental Design building just south of where the Esplanade intersects with South Lincoln Street.

Floyd said the fraternity alumni group will pay the university $110,000 for the exchange.

That amount is the difference in the appraised values between the two properties. The frat house property was appraised at $440,000 and the foundation building property is appraised at $550,000, according to Kent State.

No timeline for the exchange of properties was available.

The eventual move of the fraternity to the foundation offices means the university must find a new home for the Kent State Foundation operations.

Gene Finn, executive director of the Kent State Foundation and vice president for institutional advancement, said they would like to build a new, 30,000 square-foot building to house all the foundation’s operations and the university’s alumni offices.

Like the fraternity move, Finn said there is no definitive timeline for building a new home for the foundation and alumni offices. But the university foundation will not relocate until a new building has been built.

Floyd said one possible location under consideration for the foundation building is the former DuBois book store building at the corner of South Lincoln and Summit streets.