The $1.8 Million Question: University Acquires Former Fraternity House

This July, the University purchased the former Beta Theta Pi fraternity house at 184 High Street for an above-market price of $1.8 million, according to the Middletown tax assessor database. 

The sale ends a years-long ordeal that escalated in September 2014, when the University officially banned students from the property and the chapter was suspended by the National Foundation after a student fell out of a window during a social gathering.  

This decision came a year after the University and the Beta Theta Pi fraternity reached a settlement with a student who was raped at the house by a non-University student visiting a member of Beta Theta Pi during a party in 2010. The assailant was sentenced to 15 months after pleading to third-degree assault and first-degree unlawful restraint. The survivor alleged that the University violated Title IX regulations by failing to adequately warn her and other students about the fraternity known on campus as the “rape factory,” according to the civil lawsuit.

Following this incident, the University sent a message to students stating that if Beta Theta Pi did not come into line with other Greek organizations at the University and cooperate with the administration “to minimize unsafe conditions adjacent to campus,” it would face disciplinary action.

In September 2015, the University released another statement reiterating that any student found in 184 High Street would be in violation of the Non-Academic Code of Conduct. The following year, in September 2016, the Raymond Duy Baird Memorial Association, an organization made up of Wesleyan Beta Theta Pi alumni, put the property on the market for purchase or lease.

In 2022, the property finally changed hands when it was sold to 184 High LLC, an investment vehicle for Stonepoint Properties LLC, for $520,000. Stonepoint Properties is a Middletown-based property developer who has worked with the University before on developing the storefront of RJ Julia Booksellers. 

Stonepoint hoped to rent rooms out of the house for students at the University. They renovated the property, and began advertising rooms for rent in 2024. Agents gave tours to prospective tenants throughout the year, with the option to lease the entire property also available. Later that year, in the spring of 2025, Assistant Director of Housing Operations César Cruz Benítez sent an email clarifying that even if students met off-campus housing criteria, 184 High Street and 276 High Street were off-limits to University students. Advertisements for rooms for rent were subsequently taken down and absent the following year. 

The house served as a Middletown warming center from Dec. 1, 2025, to April 1, 2026, according to a Facebook post by the City of Middletown and the Connecticut Health Department.

One month after the acquisition, 184 High Street was included in the University’s broader rezoning proposal, which was denied by the Middletown Planning and Zoning Commission. The proposal would have allowed construction on the parcel up to five stories. The building as it stands has three floors, just over 4,500 square feet of living space, and one basement lounge not zoned as livable. 

Speaking on the acquisition, President Michael Roth ’78 underlined the importance of the property.

 “We thought it was important, given its location, that Wesleyan has access to that property,” Roth said. “Housing is something that we can use more of.”

The University hopes to make 184 High a residential option for students. However, the timeline for that goal remains uncertain.

“In order for it to be a residence now, it would need significant improvements, and we’re hoping to raise the money to make those improvements so it can be used for housing students,” Roth said. “But there is not a firm timeline on it.”

This will not be the first time a former fraternity house will be repurposed as a residence. 200 Church, formerly home to the Chi Psi fraternity, now serves as a program house for first-year students at the University who are interested in social justice. Eclectic, formerly independent, now shares the University-owned 200 High Street with Movement House.

While the sale of the house directly affects residential life at the University, not all residential life student employees were informed of the acquisition.

“We have talked a lot about what high and low rise could look like if the zoning changes, but nothing about that house specifically,” High Rise Community Advisor McCall Beall ’28 said.

Beall also expressed concern for unused buildings, especially with the rising number of students that are put into triples during their first year.

“It’s sort of frustrating as a student to see buildings like this and the old DKE house sit unused when people are forced into triples in Clark, for example,” Beall said.

The Argus found that after the sale of 184 High Street to Stonepoint Properties in 2022, the Raymond Duy Baird Memorial Association liquidated most of its funds into a different legal entity. The new organization, the Raymond Duy Baird Scholarship Corporation, is a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit with the mandate of giving academic scholarships and support to people related to the existing Wesleyan Beta Theta Pi community, according to tax filings. 

As the University faces a shortage of housing and a rejected rezoning proposal, the future of 184 High Street as on-campus housing remains uncertain.

Sangye Sherpa can be reached at ssherpa@wesleyan.edu.

Raiza Goel can be reached at rgoel@wesleyan.edu.