Here’s how a Centre County nonprofit made a former fraternity into its new home

A Centre County nonprofit that provides services and resources to people in crisis has recently made a new home for itself in an atypical new location — a former Penn State fraternity house.

Centre Helps, which had been located on South Fraser Street in downtown State College, moved into the former Alpha Chi Sigma fraternity at 406 S. Pugh St. in late May.

The first two floors of the three-floor house that was built in 1923 fell into the nonprofit’s hands after the State College Redevelopment Authority purchased the property in 2021, with a sale condition that the property had to be used for affordable housing and to house human service agencies that provide affordable housing, homelessness or special needs services.

After a few years of waiting, the redevelopment authority didn’t receive any formal proposals for the rehabilitation and conversion of the house. It began to look for potential office tenants in State College’s human services community in September, landing on Centre Helps. The nonprofit was looking for a new home at the same time, before the lease for its old space ended in April.

In October, State College Borough Council approved a $1.5 million loan to the redevelopment authority for the rehab project at a 5% interest rate for 15 years, with Centre Helps contributing another $150,000 to the project after signing the lease for the building.

Centre Helps Executive Director Denise McCann told the CDT that while she originally planned on moving into the space in March, the renovations took longer than anticipated.

“The place was rough, that’s for sure. It really needed some love,” McCann said. “It all looks amazing now, but when I walked through here for the first time, the walls and ceiling were coming down in places, stuff that I couldn’t even identify was oozing from the wall — it’s really come a long way.”

The renovations delayed the move-in process until late May, though McCann said it was well worth the wait, as the new space is a much-needed upgrade.

“This is absolutely not a dis on the former location because it served us so well for so long, but we really just outgrew that space,” McCann said during a tour of the new building last week. “Almost everything about this place is bigger than before, which will really allow our volunteers to provide our services at the highest level we possible can.”

Centre Helps offers a variety of services, including the 24/7 hotline and emergency services program, basic needs case management and the youthful offenders program. It’s also one of 12 call centers in Pennsylvania associated with the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline.

Transforming the space

When entering the former fraternity house, visitors are greeted by an open lobby area with three doorways branching from each side of the room — one on the left, one on the right and one directly in front of the visitor that leads to the second floor.

Through the left doorway is a large, blue and white painted room filled with desks that serves as Centre Helps’ conference space. Once was the fraternity’s dining room, the space is a substantial upgrade to the nonprofit’s past conference room, which prevented Centre Helps’ volunteers from efficiently carrying out crucial training classes.

“Our old conference room was about a quarter of the size of this new one, and we could only fit maybe 12 or so people in a class at a time there, so when we had a larger class, we’d have to split it into two sections instead of one big one and do maybe four to five nightly sessions per week to fit all the content in,” McCann said. “This new space can fit almost any class size though, meaning that we only need to meet two nights per week now.”

Two other rooms can be reached from the conference room — the kitchen space for volunteers to use, and the office for Centre Helps’ two case managers, which is located in the fraternity’s former library.

Also on the first floor is a large, open office and client-meeting space with entirely re-done floors. That space also connects to two other rooms — a “de-stressing” room that volunteers and clients can use during trying shifts, and McCann’s new office space, which is so large that she’s still trying to figure out how to fill it.

New hotline call center

The second floor includes the hotline call manager’s office and an new hotline call center with enough desks to fit three hotline operators.

Because the room for the new call center is so large, each hotline operator gets their own computer and desk phone to field calls. At the old space, the volunteer operators had to field calls with their personal phones and use their own laptops to document each call in the nonprofit’s database.

“It’s a much better situation here, [the operators] aren’t nearly as cramped as they were before,” McCann said. “There’s also a comfy little couch on the side that they can use to relax or de-stress when they aren’t on calls, if they need to.”

An ADA-approved bathroom and private meeting space can also be found on the second floor, along with a number of unused offices, a small food pantry, a locked storage room with several filing cabinets used to store documentation, a laundry room and a sleeping space for overnight hotline operators.

The sleeping space, which is something that the nonprofit’s prior location didn’t have, comes with a bed, shower and a desk with its own computer and phone.

The house’s third floor can also be accessed from stairs, but Centre Helps will not be using that space — instead, the redevelopment authority plans on turning that into affordable housing units.

Moving forward, with challenges

McCann is excited about what the nonprofit will be able to offer to the community in the new space.

From offering nutritional cooking classes to holding self-defense seminars, she’s eager to open the new space’s doors up to anyone in the community who may need or want to use the space.

“That conference room is going to be huge for us going forward,” McCann said. “Some organizations have already reached out to hold some meetings here, and we’ve actually hosted a couple already, too. The more we can provide our services to the community, even if it is just the conference room, the better — we want to help as many people as we can, in as many ways as possible.”

McCann is also hoping that in the future, the new space will help the nonprofit and its volunteers through some federal funding uncertainties, as the funding that supports Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline is ending on Sept. 30 and may not be renewed.

Since the 988 program was instituted in 2022, Centre Help’s call volume has tripled, although McCann said that the government has already made changes to the line.

“Here when a person calls [the 988 program], they have three possible options — press one if you’re a veteran, press two if you’re a LGBTQ+ community member and press three if you need a specialty Spanish-speaking line. We know for certain that the LGBTQ+ line is gone already,” McCann said. “With everything that’s happening in the world nowadays, the need for these services is only going to increase, but sadly the amount of resources is decreasing.”

Despite her uncertainty about the program, she feels confident that her staff and volunteers will be able make things work.

“We’ll do whatever it takes to make sure that we’re still filling the communities needs as best as we can — enhanced trainings, whatever is needed,” McCann said. “Yeah, the lack of information about what resources we may have moving forward is a little scary, but we’ve got a very diverse, very hard-working group of volunteers here, and with them, I’m confident that we can tackle whatever issues come our way.”

This story was originally published June 17, 2025 at 5:30 AM.