SIU Foundation pays $2.2M to cancel new dorm development

Southern Illinois University administrators and trustees donned Saluki-branded hard hats as the bucket of an excavator tore through the old student housing of Greek Row on Aug. 6, 2025.

Cheers erupted as plumes of dust filled the air and the long-vacant buildings dissolved into rubble. The celebration, hosted by the SIU Foundation, marked the end of an era for a historic piece of Carbondale’s campus. In its place, officials promised modernized housing that would eliminate a festering eyesore and help boost enrollment.

But a year later, the project has ground to a halt: Eight of the 14 buildings are still standing, filled with water and trash. The SIU Foundation paid $2.2 million to walk away from an agreement with a Georgia-based real estate developer for the new housing, and the future of the project remains in limbo.

‘From the ashes’

Greek Row, formerly known as Small Group Housing, was constructed in 1959, a boom era at SIU Carbondale, the year the university conferred its first doctoral degree and saw renowned architect R. Buckminster Fuller join the ranks of its faculty. But the buildings had fallen into severe disrepair over the decades, as had much of the campus’ housing stock. Because the buildings were too expensive to bring up to code, Greek Row, located on the west end of campus near the Simmons Law School, has been mostly vacant since 2012.

In a July 10, 2025, SIU Board of Trustees meeting, SIU Foundation CEO Matt Kupec outlined a proposal for the new Saluki Village — a dorm complex with 898 beds, a community building and four to five housing developments specifically for fraternities and sororities, scheduled to open in August 2027. It was to be paid for by the SIU Foundation, a nonprofit fundraising entity that is separate from the university, intended to raise funds from private donors to support student scholarships and special university initiatives.

“From the ashes of old Greek Row will rise the new Saluki Village,” Kupec told the board at the time.

In August 2025, the demolition contractor, Impact Strategies LLC, made an Instagram post about the demolition, featuring a picture of Kupec, Carbondale Chancellor Austin Lane and System President Daniel Mahony with a destroyed building behind them. The blog post of this event announced that the second phase of the demolition would begin in December to destroy the other eight buildings — if it was approved by the board.

But shortly after Phase 1 ended in October, demolition quietly stalled. Excavators, construction fencing and the contractor vanished from the site. The board never heard about Saluki Village again. Administrators and foundation officials stopped publicly talking about it altogether.

SIU’s top administrators all insisted that it made sense to halt the project while the university completed a facilities master plan that the SIU Board of Trustees is expected to consider for approval this December. But when it came to why the demolition was left unfinished, or why the SIU Foundation canceled its pre-development agreement and lost $2.2 million in the process, getting answers proved elusive. University officials said those answers could only come from SIU Foundation CEO Kupec.

Kupec said some of the lost funds could be recovered but didn’t detail how. He stressed that none of the money expended came from state dollars or tuition — only from private donations made to the SIU Foundation.

So, what happened?

University and foundation officials offered few details when asked why the project was delayed, repeating variations of a similar statement: Leaders decided to halt Saluki Village development until the university’s facilities master plan is complete.

Freedom of Information Act requests seeking correspondence about the project were denied on the grounds that they were too burdensome; narrowed requests returned no responsive records at all, according to SIU’s FOIA officer.

The SIU Board of Trustees on July 29, 2025, signed and approved an agreement for the demolition of Greek Row, according to documents obtained through FOIA. The document breaks the demolition down into Stage 1 and Stage 2. The first stage would demolish six buildings by Oct. 1, 2025, and the second would demolish the remaining eight “as soon as practical provided that the Foundation will commence Stage 2 Work, but no later than 30 days, following financing issued and accepted by the Foundation.”

The SIU Foundation entered an agreement with Impact Strategies, a construction company based out of St. Louis. The foundation paid Impact $3.6 million for the first phase of the demolition of Greek Row. That resulted in tearing down six of 14 buildings between August and October 2025. But Stage 2 never started.

Brian Hayden of Hayden Wrecking, the subcontractor of Impact Strategies that did the demolition work, said they had demolished the six buildings and had completed their contract and were unaware of a Stage 2.  Impact Strategies did not return multiple requests for comment.

Kupec said in a recent interview that Stage 2 of the Greek Row demolition had never begun and Saluki Village was no longer set for an August 2027 delivery.

In a July 29 email, SIU Board of Trustees Chairman Phil Gilbert also confirmed that demolition had not advanced.

“Stage 2 demolition has not moved forward at this point, especially in light of the fact that we are waiting on the final campus master plan that will provide a roadmap toward future student housing needs and options,” Gilbert wrote.

Even before the buildings came down, the foundation entered into a memorandum of understanding with RISE Salukis LLC, a real estate development company out of Georgia, on Aug. 8, 2025, for pre-development costs that included designing and planning the new buildings.

But then it abruptly canceled the MOU less than three months later — yet still had to pay the company $2.2 million for backing out. According to Kupec, it is unclear if that money will be recovered.

“Yes, I’m gonna call it $2 million we did for pre-development cost. That includes planning for potentially what it might look like, numbers of beds,” Kupec said. “That could be recovered depending on where we are. It might not be, but that is still up in the air. We also paid money for the demolition for those five and a half buildings.”

Kupec said the money spent on demolition and cancelling the MOU were all foundation funds. “No tuition fees or state appropriations,” he said.

The project did not fall through, Kupec stressed in a follow-up interview. He said the MOU was canceled because housing plans were being evaluated in accordance with the pending campus master plan, echoing the explanations provided by other top administrators.

The campus master plan

Saluki Village is a part of the campus master plan that will be presented to the Board of Trustees in December, which itself is a part of the Strategic 2030 plan. Both of these plans focus on improving academic buildings, student housing and campus infrastructure, among many other things. Administrators said the original Saluki Village project stalled because leaders wanted to address student housing as part of a holistic facilities plan.

“The Saluki Village project, as proposed, would have impacted our on-campus housing portfolio and associated university bond financing and covenants. As a result, the campus was asked to develop a housing plan that considered the entire portfolio, to help ensure the approach was financially sound and feasible for the University to pursue,” Gilbert wrote. “The campus has since leveraged the campus master plan process to help finalize their proposal.”

In his email, Gilbert wrote that the MOU with RISE was not a university agreement and therefore the Board of Trustees did not need to approve it.

“The SIU Foundation is a separate entity and can enter into an MOU without the approval of the board of trustees. They are responsible for their own agreements. The foundation cannot obligate the university in its agreements,” Gilbert wrote.

Gilbert wrote that he was not aware of anyone from the Board of Trustees or administration advising the SIU Foundation to cancel the MOU. According to Gilbert, canceling the MOU was the Foundation’s apparent solution.

“I think it may have become clear to the Foundation this was a logical step especially as review continued and the campus transitioned to developing a more comprehensive housing plan as part of the larger campus master plan,” Gilbert wrote.

Meanwhile, the future of Saluki Village is unclear. According to Kupec and other university officials, the project may shed the early conceptual designs and renderings for a completely new look or retain some of the original concepts.

Director of Facilities and Energy Management Mark Owens wrote in an email that student housing is a core consideration of the campus master plan and the university recognizes its housing facilities are aging and require attention.

Though the eight Greek Row buildings that still stand are in derelict condition, they are not a hazard because of restricted access to the inside of the buildings, Owens said.

“Because access is restricted, they do not present a hazard to students, employees, or the public during normal campus activities,” he wrote. “The University continues to evaluate the planning and timing for demolition of the remaining buildings.”

Staff Reporter Brayden Guy can be reached at bguy@dailyegyptian.com

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