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Upward and Eastward Expansion
Part of
21st Century Drexel
Drexel University

    Author
    John L. Puckett
    2010–2018

    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.

    John Fry, Drexel’s president since 2010, adopted a conciliatory approach to the University’s relationship with Powelton Village—the University’s 2012 master plan, which involved the participation of students, faculty, and community residents, called for Drexel’s building upward in the campus core, not outward in Powelton Village. In 2014, Fry’s leadership team unveiled a visionary plan for a University City “Innovation Neighborhood,” which would include an eastward expansion of the Drexel campus.

    The entrepreneurial higher education maven John Fry became president of Drexel following the unfortunate passing of Constantine Papadakis. He arrived at Drexel in 2010, having served the previous eight years as president of Franklin and Marshall College. Before that, as executive vice president at the University of Pennsylvania, Fry had played a major role in the design and implementation of President Judith Rodin’s comprehensive community development initiatives. 

    Launched in the mid-1990s, Rodin’s West Philadelphia Initiatives (WPI) averted, through her administration’s receptiveness to community participation, the community relations disaster that attended Penn’s 1960s-era urban renewal projects. Rodin’s leadership team, headed by Fry, consulted with community leaders at every stage of planning and development. Mindful of Drexel’s own top-down approach to urban renewal in the 1970s and the student–community insurgency it unleashed in Powelton Village, Fry’s planners adopted “a more benevolent, inclusive approach.” This time, preparatory to completing the University’s 2012 master plan, they “crowd-source[d] ideas from students, faculty, and neighborhood residents.” The urban design critic Inga Saffron assessed the plan as follows:

    While most universities today tend to be in perpetual expansion mode, Drexel’s new master plan calls for consolidating its undergraduate footprint into a tighter core, in an effort to end its destructive sprawl into the Powelton Village and University City neighborhoods. The goal is to concentrate student destinations so that no campus building is more than a five-minute walk from the academic spine on Market Street.[1]

    Put another way, Drexel would build upward in the campus core, not outward into Powelton Village.

    Complementing the 2012 master plan, Drexel unveiled a visionary plan for an “Innovation Neighborhood” in 2014, summarized as follows: “The Innovation Neighborhood looks to expand the university’s footprint east of the campus to Thirtieth Street Station [30th and Market] and up the Schuylkill over the old Pennsylvania Railroad yards [emphasis added].”[2] According to the planning document: “Twelve acres of prime undeveloped land adjacent to the third largest rail hub along the Northeast Corridor are owned by Drexel. The land lies within an urban/residential district thriving with world class education, research, health and business leaders, driving Philadelphia’s future global brand. An estimated 6.4 million square feet of construction is probable.”[3] When an interviewer asked John Fry to imagine “the ideal state of campus and of this part of Philadelphia” in 2041 (the year of Drexel’s sesquicentennial), he confidently responded:

    Drexel is the academic anchor of one of the five great innovation districts in the United States. The Schuylkill, Amtrak, and SEPTA railyard over-build has occurred. There’s another couple hundred thousand people living and working in these newly constructed neighborhoods that go all the way up to the Spring Garden bridge. That whole area is completely filled in. . . . It’s a hothouse of invention and entrepreneurship.[4]  

    Decades
    2010s
    [1] Inga Saffron, “Changing Skyline: Drexel’s Big Plans,” Philadelphia Inquirer, 7 September 2012, archived as referenced.
    [2] Scott Gabriel Knowles, Jason Ludwig, and Nathaniel Stanton, “The Promise of a New Century: Drexel and the City since the 1970s,” in Building Drexel: The University and Its City, 1891–2016, eds. Richard Dilworth and Scott Gabriel Knowles (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2017), 395.
    [3]Drexel University, Innovation Neighborhood: A Drexel University Vision (Philadelphia: Drexel University, 2014), cited in Knowles, Ludwig, and Stanton, “Promise of New Century,” 393, archived as referenced.
    [4] Knowles, Ludwig, and Stanton, “Promise of New Century,” 395.

    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.

    The Evolution of Drexel’s Academic Program in the 20th Century

    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.