Kappa Kappa Kappa fraternity will begin a $2.3 million renovation project at the end of spring term, chair of Tri-Kap’s board of directors James McKim ’83 said.
The project will add five bedrooms to the facility, redesign the house’s interior extensively, update the building’s egress routes to the most recent planning codes and construct substantial additions to both the east and west sides of the house, Bernie O’Rourke, the architect for the Tri-Kap project at Wiemann Lamphere Architects, said.
“It’s pretty much a full renovation,” he said.
Construction is currently expected to take all of summer and fall terms, O’Rourke said.
Tri-Kap’s safety issues — including the lack of a secondary fire escape route, a mold problem and the failure to meet recently updated Hanover town codes — were a major part of what the renovations aim to ameliorate, O’Rourke said.
Making improvements to the house is the primary goal of Tri-Kap’s 10-year capital campaign, which began in August 2013. The campaign aims to raise $3 million over 10 years, with most of the funds going to the construction of a new house and the rest earmarked for the fraternity’s endowment, McKim said. Since the campaign’s launch, it has raised $655,000, according to Tri-Kap’s website.
While a video on Tri-Kap’s website made for the campaign’s announcement said that the fraternity would explore loan opportunities with the College, McKim said that no such plan has been finalized as of yet.
McKim pointed out that the lot Tri-Kap has is the first view that onlookers have of Webster Avenue.
“We want to make that a place that the College can be proud of and that we can be proud of,” McKim said.
Tri-Kap’s house is amongst the oldest on Webster, dating to the early 1920s, O’Rourke said, adding that the existing building is in poor condition.
Tri-Kap considered selling its land and physical plant to the College, which would mean handing over management, and they also considered simply building an entirely new building, according to the fraternity's website. For cost reasons these options were passed over in favor of a renovation of the existing structure.
“We had some building analysts come in and look at the structure of the house, and also with the College looking at the structure and the infrastructure, and based on that analysis, we were told that the infrastructure and structure was probably better than most of the buildings on campus,” McKim said. “With that, we decided to keep it.”
McKim said that the house’s personal value for members also played a minor role in the decision to maintain the structure.
“There were possibly some sentimental reasons, although we would have been able to build the structure to look much as it looks today,” he said.
Currently, Tri-Kap has 18 beds, of which 17 were occupied last term, according to the Greek Letter Organizations and Societies winter 2015 membership statistics. The renovation will increase Tri-Kap’s capacity to 23 beds and will add a handicap bedroom on the ground floor and a five-room suite on the third floor.
The potential added revenue from the new bedrooms could also be applied to cover part of the cost of the renovations, McKim said.
Handicap accessibility is a major component of the plan, which also includes an elevator between the ground floor and the basement and handicap access to the ground floor, according to renovation plans on Tri-Kap’s website.
Emergency exits are another key component of the renovation. The entire eastern addition is composed of a new enclosed fire escape and staircase, while the existing staircase at the northern edge of the building will be rebuilt and expanded, according to the plans.
At the basement level, two new bathrooms — one male, one female — will be added, according to documents published on Tri-Kap's webpage. The existing bar will be kept, but the room behind the bar, which has been subject to continual leaking from the front porch for several decades, will be sealed off. The existing walls with their trademark bottle decorations will likely be removed.
The ground floor will see the addition of a bathroom, a kitchen and a large television room attached to the kitchen. The second floor will feature several new bedrooms and a vastly enlarged and remodeled bathroom. The third floor will now feature a four-bedroom suite, a large chapter room and a large amount of storage. Floor plans and a budget for the project were published on Tri-Kap’s webpage.
O’Rourke said Wiemann Lamphere was initially contacted about the project in 2011 after another firm had already drawn up rough plans. The project was put on the back burner until fall 2014, when plans were finalized, he said.
Domus Custom Homes of Etna, New Hampshire will serve as the lead contractor for the project. Domus, which is run by Tri-Kap alumnus Bruce Williamson ’74, will begin construction at the end of this term.
“We’re looking forward to making it a safe place, not that it isn’t super safe now, but it’s going to be even safer, and we’re going to be making it look sharp,” Williamson said.
McKim said that he was not sure if Tri-Kap would attempt to expand its brotherhood because of the added space. With 57 active members, Tri-Kap is one of the smaller fraternities on campus by membership, only ahead of Gamma Delta Chi fraternity with 56 members, Chi Gamma Epsilon fraternity with 45 members and Sigma Nu fraternity with 33 members, according to GLOS winter 2015 membership statistics, the most recent term available.
“I’m not sure it’s going to allow us to do more in terms of growth,” McKim said. “I’m not on campus much anymore, and I’m not intimately familiar with how all of the programs operate.”
McKim emphasized that Tri-Kap would work with the College throughout the process of renovating its facilities.
“We’re looking forward to having this project done and working with the College to make it a smooth process, and make it a building that our alums will be proud of,” he said.
Numerous members of Tri-Kap contacted for this article either declined to comment or did not respond to requests for comment. Other alumni leaders of the house also did not respond to requests for comment.
Correction appended (April 12, 2015):A previous version of this article misattributed information to McKim that should have been attributed to the fraternity's website. The fact that Tri-Kap considered selling its land and physical plant to the College, which would mean handing over management, and that they also considered simply building an entirely new building,as well as thefact that two new bathrooms will be added to the basement level and the changes to the bar area and wall decorations, should be attributed to the fraternity's webpage. The Dartmouth regrets this error.
Addendum (April 12, 2015): This article originally quoted McKim as saying that the house's increased size may allow the fraternity to expand its brotherhood. McKim later clarified in an email that he was referring to the expansion of programs such as philanthropy, not the size of the brotherhood.
