Alpha Drive fraternities are working with ASU to exchange properties in order to give fraternities and the University continuous parcels of land inside the Alpha Drive area.

Currently, Alpha Drive fraternities and ASU each own checkered pieces of the 13-acre block of land. The plan seeks to divide the properties into two even allocations.

ASU and Threshold, LLC, a private group that represents the owners of the eight houses on Alpha Drive, formed a letter of understanding that the Arizona Board of Regents approved on Aug. 7.

ABOR then gave the two groups 90 days to finalize a land-exchange agreement, said Steven Nielsen, assistant vice president for University Real Estate Development.

If the two sides can come to an agreement, housing for up to 3,000 students — both Greek and non-Greek student housing — could be built on the Alpha Drive site.

Threshold’s Executive Director Jeff Abraham said should the sides come to an agreement, the current houses would be demolished and the fraternities would be displaced during the construction period.

Abraham said ASU acknowledged this in the letter of understanding and the displaced fraternities would be taken care of.

“ASU has assured the fraternity property owners that if they wish to house their members in ASU housing, there will be housing provided for that purpose, but the fraternities are not obligated to take advantage of that,” Abraham said. “They could choose to go somewhere else.”

ASU and the fraternities are working with their own developers to form the plans for the site and the exchange.

“The problem that we have had is that this is a 13-acre site, but there are eight private properties scattered in a checkerboard fashion across the property,” Nielsen said.

The property isn’t developmentally friendly, so the process has moved slowly in the past, he said.

The fraternity house owners will trade their total 5.77 acres of land for a continuous parcel of 5.77 acres from ASU on the Alpha Drive site. Nielsen said the main objective of the project is to build a strong and vibrant Greek community.

“We’re concerned about the state of Greek life and Greek housing on campus, and we’re looking for a way to foster a much stronger Greek system,” he said.

ASU President Michael Crow, who has received criticism regarding Alpha Drive, said the University is not anti-Greek in any way.

“We want as many different learning and living types of environments as our students want,” Crow said, in an interview with The State Press editorial board on Thursday.

“We want them to work, and Alpha Drive right now doesn’t work,” he said. “It’s a total disaster. We’re pushing the reset button.”

Abraham said it is the fraternities’ intention to be responsive to Crow’s request for a multiple-use project on the site that would include Greek and other student housing, a hotel and conference center with retail space, community space for students and some type of a student recreation center.

Though the land exchange must be finalized by early November, Nielsen said several months would pass before any construction begins. It could take two to three years before the first new housing is completed, Abraham said.

Marketing sophomore Preston Rodie, a member of Sigma Chi, said a new house would not make up for losing the history of his fraternity’s current house.

“It’d be awesome to have a new house and everything, but I think the history behind the house is more important to me and more important to the majority of my brothers,” he said.

Though the two sides were able to form the letter of understanding earlier this year, it is possible that they could fail to form the land exchange agreement, Nielsen said, though he doesn’t believe this will happen.

“We need to do something about the way Alpha Drive looks,” Nielsen said. “We need to find a solution, and we’re here to put whatever resources are necessary to find that solution.”

Reach the reporter at salvador.rodriguez@asu.edu.