Update 2:08 p.m. July 18, 2025: The full Penn State Board of Trustees unanimously approved the purchase during its meeting on Friday at the Abington campus.
Penn State is finalizing an agreement to purchase the former Beta Theta Pi house for $7.3 million, bringing to an end a complicated, yearslong legal battle to acquire the property where 19-year-old Timothy Piazza sustained fatal injuries during an alcohol-fueled hazing event in the winter of 2017.
The Board of Trustees Finance and Investment Committee on Thursday recommended approval of the agreement, which will be voted on by the full board on Friday.
The 22,845-square-foot house on 0.91 acres at 220 N. Burrowes Rd. is surrounded by the University Park campus and has been owned by the Alpha Upsilon chapter of Beta Theta Pi since 1928. A deed covenant stipulated that if the property ceased to be used as a fraternity, Penn State had the right to reacquire it.
The alumni corporation that owns the house has already approved the agreement, Sara Thorndike, Penn State’s senior vice president of finance and business, told the committee.
An appraisal of the property commissioned in 2024 by Penn State valued it at $5.45 million, while the fraternity chapter received appraisals of $13.1 million in 2019 and $12.25 million last year, according to a presentation to the committee.
Penn State intends to use the property as “swing space on a temporary basis” until a long-term plan is formulated, Thorndike said.
“The university is in the process of updating our master plan and as part of that master planning process we would evaluate what the long-term best use of this property would be,” Thorndike said.
Penn State has also agreed to a settlement with Donald Abbey, the alumnus and California real estate mogul who brought multiple lawsuits contending he was owed $10 million from a loan agreement with the fraternity for house renovations in 2009. Terms of the settlement have not been disclosed.
Timothy Piazza’s father, Jim, said he and his wife, Evelyn, are “pleased” to see a resolution about the house more than eight years after their son’s death.
“To us, returning the house to the university was a no-brainer from the beginning,” Jim Piazza told StateCollege.com. “While we understand Mr. Abbey‘s point of view, I hope and suspect he finally came to the realization that it was his former friends and colleagues that wronged him, not Penn State University. We now hope the university will put the house or the property to good use for the betterment of its students.”
Beta Theta Pi’s Penn State chapter had its charter revoked and was permanently banned within months of Piazza’s February 2017 death from brain injuries and a lacerated spleen after falling head-first down the basement stairs at the fraternity house.
State prosecutors said Tim Piazza was given 18 alcoholic drinks in 82 minutes on Feb. 2, 2017 during an obstacle course known as “The Gauntlet” as part of a “bid acceptance night,” and that no one called for help until nearly 12 hours after that fall, when Piazza was discovered unconscious, stiff and cold. Before then, video evidence showed Piazza endured a series of falls throughout the early morning hours and making his way to the basement, where he was seen crawling under a bar.
Piazza was taken to Penn State Hershey Medical Center, where he died on Feb. 4, 2017.
Multiple Lawsuits
While criminal cases against more than 20 fraternity members played out over the ensuing years, the last concluding in 2024, Penn State was separately engaged since 2018 in litigation to acquire the house, citing the 1928 deed provision.
Centre County Judge Marshall ruled after a 2021 trial that Penn State has the right to purchase the property, and a state Superior Court panel upheld the decision in 2023. Marshall subsequently ordered arbitration to determine the sale terms.
Abbey, meanwhile, argued in multiple lawsuits that any transaction needed to account for the loan he made for renovations.
The agreement stated that if the property was no longer used as a fraternity, the money must be paid back to the former Beta brother and Penn State football player, and if the alumni corporation did not have the wherewithal to do so, he would have a lien on the house. In one of the lawsuits, the alumni corporation claimed the agreement was a sweetheart deal made by its president and was never properly approved.
Penn State informed Abbey that it would wait until the deed case was resolved before discussing his interests in the house, according to his complaint against the university, but after the Superior Court decision told him it had no intention “to make him whole.”
Abbey claimed Penn State fraudulently represented its position before he made the loan, citing 2005 emails from then Vice President for Student Affairs Vicky Triponey that said the university had no intention of taking over the house or the authority to do so, that acquiring the property “is certainly not possible or desirable,” and that even if the chapter’s recognition was rescinded the corporation would continue to own the house.
After the Superior Court decision, Abbey alleged, Penn State planned to purchase the property for less than his contributions and said the valuation would not consider what he said he was owed. He also said his demand to participate in arbitration was rebuffed.
A federal district judge dismissed Abbey’s case against Penn State in April in part because claims were past the statute of limitations and because he failed to show how arbitration would not determine a fair sale price that would attach Abbey’s lien to the proceeds. He was permitted, however, to file an amended complaint, and did so before the two parties notified the court a tentative settlement had been reached.
Abbey’s lawsuit sought monetary damages as well as a declaration precluding Penn State from purchasing the house or giving Abbey the right to participate in arbitration.
Future of the Property
While Penn State has not disclosed the long-term plans for the property, former Penn State President Eric Barron testified at the trial over the deed provisions that acquiring the house was not a motivation behind banning the fraternity.
“What occurred was just reprehensible. It was awful,” Barron said, according to court transcripts. “It was a case where I believe a young man’s life could have been saved if people cared about him. And as an institution, any death is horrible, but we just couldn’t ignore the evidence that was there and needed to have a very strong message that we just can’t have this happen.”
University officials did discuss the deed and the future of the property in the weeks and months after Piazza’s death, and contemporaneous records presented at the trial showed then Barron said the property would not be used in the future as student housing. Barron also had multiple conversations with Jim Piazza who suggested potential uses for the property, including demolishing the house or replacing it with an engineering building named in his son’s honor.
Jim Piazza said on Thursday that his only hope for the property now is “something good.”
“It would be cool if they somehow honored Tim but I am not asking for it,” he added.
