Back in 2018, the ECU Foundation through a shell company spent $1.3 million to buy an 8,243-square foot home just south of Greenville for the chancellor’s use.
Apparently, this has proven unsatisfactory. WCTI and the Greenville Reflector report that the plan now is to install Chancellor Philip Rogers and his family in temporary housing.
The TV station says the foundation is leasing “a traditional three-bedroom house” in Winterville, a Pitt County town south of Greenville. The media outlets say the 2018 purchase, which is in the Star Hill Farms neighborhood near Greenville Country Club, needs repair.
The foundation later added to the Kariblue Lane property, spending $1 million in 2022 to buy two adjacent, empty lots. That enables more parking for university events.
WCTI cites ECU trustees Chairman Jason Poole as saying it’s a good time to decide whether a smaller house would better meet the university’s needs and culture.
The idea is to lease the Winterville house for a year, sell the current one and “find a new official residence” for the chancellor, WCTI says.
A controversy preceded the 2018 purchase. Up to then, East Carolina’s chancellors lived in the Dail House, a 1930 two-story house on East Fifth Street across from the university’s main quad. It was deemed lacking for university functions, and the property also needed renovation.
Former Chancellor Steve Ballard told the Reflector back in 2018 that the location suffered from a lack of privacy and a proximity to downtown, where shootings and bar traffic raised security concerns.
Given that renovation would have been costly (about $3.5 million), ECU leaders thought the move to Star Hill Farms made financial sense.
Critics including Harry Smith, an ECU grad who was on the UNC System’s Board of Governors, thought the acquisition was too lavish for an institution that’s supposed to be a beacon for Down East’s Tier 1 communities. The foundation bought the home from Greenville dentist Rick Webb, who WITN says was a former board member of the group.
Folks at ECU have seemingly bigger problems to worry about — namely an 8.1% enrollment drop since the fall of 2017 to the fall of 2023. It hasn’t announced this year’s enrollment.
ECU’s closest peer institution in the system, UNC Charlotte, saw its enrollment grow by 3.3% over the same period.
