Welcome to the new reality of Southern living, where living in luxury is not just a perk, but a necessity.
At the University of Alabama, the Delta Zeta house isn’t just a place to hang out between classes. It’s a $17 million, 40,000-square-foot mansion, complete with a grand staircase, a crystal chandelier and a leaded glass window that proudly displays the band’s logo.
And Delta Zeta is not alone.
Across the South, high-end societies are pulling out all the stops, adding drying racks, gold-leaf designs and craft rooms to their opulent residences, the Wall Street Journal reported.
As enrollment soared in the 2010s, these Greek organizations doubled down on the lavish amenities, sparing no expense to ensure their houses stood out during rush week.
At the University of Alabama, the cluster housing arms race began in 2012 and 2013, with the first $10 million campus house.
By 2016, nearly every social group had spent at least that much, according to school records.
Kappa Delta at Ole Miss unveiled a $13.3 million mansion in 2020, and in 2022, Alpha Chi Omega at the University of Oklahoma unveiled a stunning $12.7 million mansion. Texas A&M’s Tri Delta chapter is already planning to up the ante with a $15 million replacement for its 1984 home, set to debut in 2026.
Blame it on high construction costs, or strict ADA and commercial building codes, but community homes now cost about $450 to $550 per square foot to build, compared to $300 to $375 a few years ago ago, said Charles Watson, an architect with Pryor Morrow. Diary.
However, these societies are willing to pay the price, knowing that these luxury homes are crucial to attracting the next generation of members.
The house is the biggest way to tell people about our society, Melissa Hall Simmons, a Tri Delta student and interior designer who helped renovate her 43,000-square-foot chapter house at the University, told the media of Arkansas. Every year before the draft, there is a push to get things together.
Family homes have come a long way since their origins in the late 1800s. Today, these mansions are not just living quarters, but social centers, where meals, meetings and even bachelor party parties take center stage. attention. And they’re all over YouTube and TikTok, with house tours racking up millions of views.
For example, at Pi Beta Phi’s $15 million University of Alabama house, a video of the sisters dancing in “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” themed bundles and leg warmers, complete with a chandelier magnificent went viral during rush week.
Everyone was trying to recruit the best, brightest, most amazing women, said Jennifer Keeling, president of the facility’s corporate board for the University of Oklahoma’s Kappa Alpha Theta chapter, which is shelling out about $14 million for it. renovated and expanded his 1932 home by 10,000. square feet.
The stakes are high, and with social media making first impressions more important than ever, young women are now laser-focused on the look and feel of their living spaces. When I lived in the Theta house, I couldn’t have told you what the couch looked like, I didn’t care about any of that. Now they just do, Keeling told The Journal. It is a competitive disadvantage if other houses have nice facilities.
Delta Zeta in Alabama tore down their old house in 2017 to make way for a new, 40,000-square-foot estate with room for 66 family members.
Alumna Virginia Loftin, who co-chaired the building committee, said the improvement was driven by an increase in enrollment. The new house, completed in 2018, has a spacious front porch with ten rocking chairs, each named after an alumni donor.
Inside, the home is just as luxurious. There’s a backpack room to keep the lobby tidy, a white oak paneled library with a limestone fireplace from the original 1925 house and a wall honoring deceased members of the community.
The kitchen produces hundreds of meals each day, with a serving room displaying the family’s silverware. And for those late-night cravings, alumna Hannah Duffy revealed in a 2021 YouTube tour that the kitchen is stocked with snacks like Doritos and ice cream.
You feel like you live in a mansion, which I guess you do, Duffy said in the video.
And the amenities don’t end there. The chapter room, which seats 300, doubles as a practical dance space and even has a cubed T-shirt closet and a Dutch door for hosting groups of friends, according to architect Les Cole.
There is also a craft closet with an industrial sink for cleaning paint brushes and several study rooms equipped with video conferencing technology for job interviews.
The competition to have the best community home is so fierce that even rising costs have not deterred these organizations. However, some, like Sigma Kappa from Alabama, have had to put their plans on hold.
Earlier this year, the chapter canceled the $24.7 million dream house project due to inflation, according to university documents. It would have set a new national record for single-family home price tags.
“We’ve had some projects in the last few years that have been put on hold and gone back to the drawing board,” Liz Toombs, a Kentucky-based interior designer who specializes in guest houses, told the Journal.
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