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Neighborhood and Community Development
Part of
21st Century Drexel
Drexel University

    Author
    John L. Puckett
    2010–2018

    Under President John Fry, Drexel adopted a two-prong approach to neighborhood community development—creating a university-assisted middle school and a neighborhood center to connect community partners with Drexel resources.

    Drexel launched two initiatives in the 2010s to strengthen neighborhood community development. One initiative was the fall 2016 opening of a public, university-assisted middle school, developed through a partnership with the School District of Philadelphia’s Science Leadership Academy (SLA). The new school was temporarily housed in Drexel’s Dornsife Center for Community Partnerships. Opened in 2014, the Dornsife Center is the hub for Drexel’s initiative to support economic development in Mantua.

    A key strategy in Drexel’s urban revival initiative in the 2010s was to expand the University’s community relations program to include the development of a university-assisted public school on Drexel’s campus and support for community economic development in the Mantua neighborhood. Leading the initiative was Drexel president John Fry, who predicted that by 2041 Drexel would be “the most civically engaged university in the United States.”[1]

    Following Penn’s lead in building the Penn Alexander School, a university-assisted K–8 public school in West Philadelphia, Drexel collaborated with the Samuel Powel Elementary School—a K–4 neighborhood public school in Powelton Village. The aim was

    “to strengthen and expand Powel by creating a partner middle school (grades 5–8) in conjunction with Science Leadership Academy High School (SLA), an innovative magnet STEM high school. By 2014, Drexel had purchased the 14-acre University City High School site in a joint venture with Wexford Science + Technology, with the long-term goal of building a new facility to house both schools, as Wexford moved to add commercial, residential and retail development on other parcels on the site.”[2]

    University City High School, located at 3601 Filbert, just north of Market Street, closed in 2013. Acquisition of the site allowed Drexel to extend its footprint in the area north of Chestnut and west of 36th Street to the line of 37th Street. This time there was no community uprising.

    In 2016, the SLA opened its new middle school in temporary quarters at Drexel’s new Dornsife Center for Neighborhood Partnerships, located in the 3500 block of Spring Garden Street in Mantua. As of 2017, the University had not reported a timetable for construction of a permanent home for the SLA at the University City High School site. Presumably, the SLA will remain in its present location until Drexel puts up a new building for the school in the area that was once the campus of University City High School.

    The Dornsife Center for Neighborhood Partnerships opened in 2014. Its founding purpose is to assist federally sponsored community development in Mantua. In 2013, Mantua was designated a federal “Promise Zone,” a status that gave the neighborhood higher priority when seeking federal grants in 25 areas of community life, for example, education, housing, and public safety.[3]

    Neighborhoods
    Powelton Village, University City
    Decades
    2010s
    [1] John A. Fry, “Drexel at 125 and 150: Celebrating History with an Eye to the Future,” in Building Drexel: The University and Its City, eds. Richardson Dilworth and Scott Gabriel Knowles (Philadelphia: Temple University Press), 1–6, quote from p. 3.
    [2] Scott Gabriel Knowles, Jason Ludwig, and Nathaniel Stanton, “The Promise of a New Century: Drexel and the City Since the 1970s,” in Dilworth and Knowles, Building Philadelphia, 389. 
    [3] Knowles, Ludwig, and Stanton, “Promise of New Century,” 390–391.

    Continue reading 21st Century Drexel
    Turnaround under Constantine Papadakis

    Drexel President Constantine Papadakis guided Drexel out of near bankruptcy and into a new millennium by refocusing the University as a student-centered institution emphasizing three essentials: “co-op, urban location, technology.”

    Upward and Eastward Expansion

    Drexel’s plans for expansion under president John Fry focus on building upward in the campus core and—in a visionary plan for long-term development—eastward over the old Pennsylvania Railroad railyards.

    Commercial Building Boom

    In the 2010s Drexel launched a building boom of mixed-use commercial developments along Chestnut Street and on streets that intersected with the campus.

    Neighborhood and Community Development

    Under President John Fry, Drexel adopted a two-prong approach to neighborhood community development—creating a university-assisted middle school and a neighborhood center to connect community partners with Drexel resources.

    Continue reading Drexel University
    The Foundation of the Drexel Institute of Art, Science, and Industry

    Anthony J. Drexel created the Drexel Institute of Art, Science, and Industry—the 1891 forefather of Drexel University—with the goal of providing working-class students with a balanced education and path of upward mobility.

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    Over the course of the twentieth century, the academic program of the Institute grew to comprise an array of coeducational undergraduate and graduate programs in engineering, science, and technology, with engineering as the flagship discipline.

    Administrative and Financial Difficulties of the 1980s and 1990s

    From the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s, Drexel was plagued by sharply declining enrollments and hostilities between faculty and university administrators.

    Turnaround under Constantine Papadakis

    Drexel President Constantine Papadakis guided Drexel out of near bankruptcy and into a new millennium by refocusing the University as a student-centered institution emphasizing three essentials: “co-op, urban location, technology.”

    Upward and Eastward Expansion

    Drexel’s plans for expansion under president John Fry focus on building upward in the campus core and—in a visionary plan for long-term development—eastward over the old Pennsylvania Railroad railyards.

    Commercial Building Boom

    In the 2010s Drexel launched a building boom of mixed-use commercial developments along Chestnut Street and on streets that intersected with the campus.

    Neighborhood and Community Development

    Under President John Fry, Drexel adopted a two-prong approach to neighborhood community development—creating a university-assisted middle school and a neighborhood center to connect community partners with Drexel resources.

    Drexel and Penn in University RDA Unit 1

    The Drexel Institute of Technology’s successful efforts to receive half of University Redevelopment Area Unit 1—originally designated exclusively for the University of Pennsylvania’s campus expansion—asserted the Institute’s importance as a rising educational institution in West Philadelphia.

    Drexel and the Creation of the University City Science Center

    The Drexel Institute had only a peripheral and grudging involvement in the creation of the University City Science Center, a project of the West Philadelphia Corporation (WPC) in Unit 3.

    Drexel and Community Conflict in Unit 5

    Drexel unveiled a plan in 1964 for expanding its holdings and building dormitories in Powelton Village and the planned projects were protested by community members until the mid-1970s.