At the site of the former Myers Hall, construction is ongoing to create a new green space.
By: Alan Greenberger, Vice President of Real Estate and Facilities
Welcome back to campus. Summer is usually a busy time for Drexel Real Estate and Facilities as we get the campus ready for the beginning of the fall quarter, and this year has been no different. We have been focusing our efforts on projects that enhance the student experience by centralizing academic support services, creating dynamic new recreational spaces and improving the safety and walkability of our campus. Meanwhile, our partners have been hard at work on the latest developments that are transforming our corner of University City into a vibrant innovation district. Highlights of summer construction activity on and around campus are described in this update.
Myers Hall Recreational Field
The demolition of Myers Hall, a residence hall well-remembered by many of our alumni but now obsolete, is now complete, and if you peek through the protective fence, you will see the great new recreational green space for students taking shape in its place, right in the heart of the residential campus. Landscape work — lawn, surrounding trees, fences and amenities — is being installed through October. The project is scheduled for completion later this fall.
Moving CLASS to the Academic Resource Center
Beginning with the 2024 fall term, the Center for Learning and Academic Success Services (CLASS) has moved to the Korman Center as the latest step in Drexel’s development of the Academic Resource Center (ARC), a one-stop shop for tutoring, academic coaching and academic support. With the help of a donor gift, we are renovating the ground floor of the Korman Center to provide a more prominent and visible location for CLASS in the center of the University City campus. You can now find CLASS at the ARC and visit the spaces during an open house from 1–3 p.m. on Oct. 1.
Buckley Bubble at Vidas Athletic Complex
At the Vidas Athletic Complex, construction has begun for the installation of a new practice field that will be enclosed by an inflatable structure (the relocated Buckley Bubble) during the winter season, allowing students to use the field year-round. Construction is scheduled for completion by the time the winter weather takes hold.
The midblock crossing at Chestnut Street between 31st and 32nd streets is now active.
Chestnut Street Mid-Block Crossing
The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation’s installation of a new mid-block crosswalk and traffic light on the 3200 block of Chestnut Street is now complete and operational. The University has long advocated for this crossing and secured a grant to help cover the cost of the project, so that our community can more safety access the Creese/MacAlister complex. Once the exhibition has concluded of the sculpture known as “Monument in Waiting,” located next to Stratton Hall along the Korman Quad, the University will be performing final site renovations to create a path connecting the quad directly to the new crosswalk.
Partnership Projects
University City leads Philadelphia and the region in development projects, especially for bioscience. These projects are being developed and funded by third-party developers who are leasing the land from Drexel and partnering with us to fulfill several critical goals for the University: more co-op and career opportunities for our students and more collaborative research opportunities for our faculty. For Drexel, the transition from static parking lots to sites of innovation adjacent to our core campus is profound and will deliver an extraordinary new vibrancy to campus. In addition to the new innovative businesses in our midst, we will also be seeing new residences and street-level retail move in.
At Schuylkill Yards, Brandywine Realty Trust’s new mixed-use building at 3025 John F. Kennedy Blvd is complete and operational. At 3151 Market St., their new building for science is fully clad and nearly ready for tenant occupancy.
Projects by Spark Therapeutics at 3001 Chestnut St. and by Gattuso Development Partners at 3201 Cuthbert St. are well underway, with progress made daily. Both structures are completing their exterior cladding and are readying for interior furnishing. At the western end of campus, Wexford Science & Technology’s building known as One uCity Square is nearly 100 percent occupied. Wexford has also been infusing street life in and around the square itself with events, programming and new dining opportunities, particularly along 37th Street and at the Anova Residences on Lancaster Avenue.
The Things You Don’t See
We continue to make infrastructure upgrades at numerous locations throughout campus. Like any institution of our size, parts break and systems go down. We work very hard to ensure that those outages are for short periods of time. But whether through newly cooled IT closets or piping and valve replacements, when the campus runs smoothly, it is often the result of proactive maintenance work by our teams in Real Estate and Facilities.
Utility Rollbacks & Tune-ups
Summer brings two inevitabilities: very hot weather that strains our cooling systems and utility work on city streets.
As a major user of electricity, Drexel voluntarily participates in a regional program that asks us to roll back our electrical use during limited peak times or during an emergency. These rollbacks are infrequent, but when they do happen, we sometimes have to suspend cooling in our non-laboratory spaces for a few hours at a time. Air systems continue to circulate air, but temperatures can go up. We apologize to anyone who has been inconvenienced by this program. It is all being done to maintain the integrity of the regional power grid.
You are probably aware from seeing new asphalt patches that various utilities have been active on and in the streets around campus. By the time you are reading this, most of that work will have been completed. Drexel Real Estate and Facilities works closely with our utilities to plan for and manage disruptions, and we will continue to do our best to notify community members of disruptions as we receive advance notice. But sometimes utility work occurs without notice because of unexpected service problems. Thank you for your patience during these occasional summertime inconveniences.
How to Get the Latest Facilities Updates
You can opt in to receive email notification of construction work, scheduled utility shutoffs and other scheduled maintenance work being performed by Real Estate and Facilities by sending an email to listserv@lists.drexel.edu with only the following information in the body of the message: subscribe facilities-notices-L.
In addition to updates like this one in DrexelNEWS, we also post Facilities Notices (shutoffs, outages, repairs, construction) to a feed that appears on the Drexel Real Estate and Facilities homepage, and we track the progress of major Drexel and partner projects on campus via the Current Projects page.