The State College Borough issued a rooming house permit to the owners of the former Phi Delta Theta fraternity house Friday, meaning residents can return home pending property inspections -- but not on their own terms.
While the owners hope to restore the property to fraternity house status, they applied for the permit to get the 24 residents back in their 240 N. Burrowes Road home before the borough considers a proposed zoning ordinance which bans new rooming houses on campus, said Sandy Deveney, a member of the former fraternity's alumni association board of directors.
Now, permit in hand, Deveney believes the property is safe no matter what the borough decides -- the lot can now be "grandfathered" in as a rooming house, he said.
"We're in a beat-the-clock situation," Deveney said. "We did what we didn't want to do, but we had to do it."
Obtaining a rooming house permit is something the embattled fraternity has been fighting since a borough zoning officer declared the use of the property changed last year. Phi Delta Theta was suspended after violating a dry-house policy in 2007, and its successor, the Phi Society, is not yet university-recognized -- a key ingredient to the borough's zoning definition of a fraternity.
The decision to take out a rooming house permit isn't an indication owners accept the borough's February rooming house designation, Deveney said -- it's a reflection of their commitment to ensure a seamless transition for the students.
He hopes the displaced residents, which include members of the Phi Society and Kappa Alpha Order, can return to the house as early as later this week. However, the property must be inspected to ensure all damage from a February fire has been repaired and again to prove the century-old house is up to rooming house codes, Deveney said. That shouldn't be a problem after students, friends and families launched a restoration campaign that included more than $1,500 in alumni donations and manual labor, he said.
On the legal end, the unsanctioned fraternity's lawyer, Bernie Cantorna, has appealed the borough's ruling and asked a judge for an emergency injunction. The property owners are handcuffed by a required rooming house parking-spaces-to-bedrooms-ratio which would reduce the maximum occupancy of the house, he said.
The owners still hope to win those decisions, Deveney said, but the borough forced their hand with a new zoning ordinance proposed at Wednesday's State College Planning Commission meeting.
Under the new ordinance, rooming houses would be banned on campus, leaving fraternities that lose university recognition with "ridiculous" options for their properties, Cantorna said last week.
Phi Society members are anxious to return to the property regardless of the circumstances, Phi Society President Ryan Lang said.
"We can't wait," Lang said. "We're such a tight brotherhood, so it's tough being split up."
The property is the focus of a university lawsuit, with Penn State suing for ownership of the property via a purchasing option in its deed.
