July 3, 2016

Sigma Tau Gamma Alumni Brothers,

Good News… after a long and arduous process, 801 Union Street has now passed Valparaiso City Fire Inspection and will be ready for our fall tenants when they arrive in August.  The last remaining task is submission of the newly required Rental Registration Agreement to the City.  The first phase of building rehab has been completed.  The main and lower levels are both ready for the tenants use for both Fall ’16 and Spring ’17 Semesters!

From the outset, there had been much doubt about the scale and difficulty of bringing the house and property back to a useable condition.  We have now reached a major milestone with this phase.

A tremendous THANK YOU to all who helped make this possible!  A special thanks to those who contributed major time and effort… Jim Zink, Dave Besterman, Tom Witt, John Seelander Tony Bommersbach, Max Myers, Mark Mertes and Steve Jenkins as well as many others over the course of the past two years and more.  Also, a big THANK YOU to those who donated and loaned the money to allow this all to happen!

Plans for the next phase, rehab of the upper level, are now under way.  The objective of this phase is to bring the six sleeping rooms and the quad bathroom up to par with the work done on the first two levels, in order to make more rooms available for tenant rental beginning with the 2017 Fall Semester.  We may retain one upstairs room for storage and our own use.  Even with that, we would have 9 sleeping rooms available going forward instead of the 4 sleeping rooms we currently have rented for the coming school year.

Much preparation and work has already been done and the upper level has been secured to restrict access until the rehabilitation is completed.  Once again we will call upon the carpentry expertise of Dave LaRoe and Guy Russ to get this phase under way before the end of summer.  Thereafter we will again call on the many brothers who helped before to patch, paint and prepare these rooms for use.  Please let us know when and if you can lend a hand in getting this new phase completed.  Our target for searching for tenants will be October of this year for the new 2017 -18 school year.  Once again, we will need your help!  Even if you were unable to help in the past, please consider lending your time and effort to this task as it will complete the rehab to the point that income from rental will carry our project to completion.

While these tasks are underway we will shift our future focus on reaching what has always been our primary goal.  As this work is completed we will begin in earnest the assessment of all that will be needed to support the return of our Beta Lambda undergraduate chapter.  Alumni will need to play an important role in reaching this objective.  Expect to hear more about this as our attention turns to what our final objective has been from the beginning… The return of our Chapter to VU.

We expect that Homecoming 2016 will play a major role in the preparation for reaching our final goal.  Please begin now to plan your attendance at this year’s Homecoming!
Save the date:  September 23rd, 24th, and 25th!  VU Homecoming '16!  Annual Board Meeting on Saturday… all Alumni welcome!

Kurt Ulbricht ’71, President Omicron Delta Inc.