Growing NCC buys old fraternity.

Byline: Greg Bolt The Register-Guard

Continuing what might be one of the biggest expansions in its history, Northwest Christian College has purchased a second former fraternity house as well as space in a neighboring office building to house an expected surge in enrollment and expanded programs.

The college has purchased the former Sigma Nu house at 763 E. 11th Ave., which will be renovated and turned into a student residence hall for 50 NCC students. It also will lease the first floor of a medical office building at 755 E. 11th Ave. and use it as the home of its School of Graduate and Nontraditional Studies.

NCC paid $700,000 for the Sigma Nu building. The Christian college is in the silent phase of a new $6.5 million capital campaign intended to prepare it for a growth spurt that officials believe will more than double its enrollment by 2014.

Enrollment at NCC hit 500 students this year, up 7 percent from the year before. Enrollment grew 73 percent from 1990 to 2004 and is expected to rise to 1,200 over the next eight years, said James Dean, NCC's vice president for advancement.

The recent purchases are part of an effort to prepare for that growth.

"One of the things about this is, it's important to build capacity first," Dean said. "Because when they come, they have to have a place to stay. And they're coming."

If the campaign is successful, it will allow NCC to tackle several other projects as well. It plans to renovate the Goodwin Administration Building, make changes to its new Morse Events Center, finish work on the Pomajevich Faculty Building and possibly tackle some renovation of its existing Burke-Griffeth residence hall.

NCC also is adding nine full-time faculty positions and boosting three part-time positions to full-time. Dean said 47 percent of the school's enrollment is in the School of Graduate and Nontraditional Studies, which offers evening and weekend classes for working students who want to complete a bachelor's degree or earn a master's.

The graduate and degree completion programs will be housed in the first floor of the medical office building next to the Sigma Nu house. That building also will house NCC's counseling center.

The college also is expanding its athletics program by joining the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics and moving to add women's volleyball, men's and women's soccer, men's and women's cross country and men's and women's golf. The additional sports are expected to draw at least 50 new students by 2007.

To accommodate the new programs, NCC will add offices in the Morse Events Center for the athletic director and staff, move the exercise equipment to the third floor and convert the basement level to classrooms and dance and aerobics space. A donation also recently allowed the college to purchase a new athletic department bus for team travel.

The Sigma Nu purchase is the second major real estate acquisition for the college in the past year. Earlier, it bought the former Kappa Sigma fraternity house at the corner of East 11th Avenue and Alder Street and renamed it the Pomajevich Faculty Building after a major donor. Renovations of the building are almost complete.

The Sigma Nu house is next-door to that building. The house has a footnote in Eugene history because it provided the interior sets for the Delta House fraternity in the movie "Animal House." A former fraternity house next-door served as the exterior of Delta House, but that building was torn down in 1986 and replaced by the medical office building.

But the Sigma Nu house apparently also played a bit part in NCC history, although the link wasn't discovered until college officials took a close look at the fraternity building.

About 20 years ago, NCC owned an older house on East 11th Avenue that served as a student residence hall known as Hoven House. Out front was a bell, about 12 inches in diameter and set in concrete. One day, the bell disappeared and was never found.

When college officials were looking through the Sigma Nu house before buying it, they checked out the basement, presumably the location of the infamous toga party dance scene in "Animal House." Jeff Miller, a former Eugene mayor who graduated from NCC and lived in Hoven House, shined his flashlight into a dark closet.

"Guess what he found in the Sigma Nu basement? The Hoven House bell," said James Dean, NCC's vice president for advancement.