The University may be getting even closer to jumping on the monorail.
Executive Vice President Tallman Trask said the administration is close to choosing an architect and a development partner for the planned, more than-$200 million overhaul of Central Campus.
Trask listed five finalists for a Central Campus development partner:
-- Trammell Crow Company, a Dallas-based commercial real estate developer, to which the University of Pennsylvania outsourced their real estate and facilities management in 1997
-- Jones, Lang and LaSalle, a worldwide developer that has done work at the Georgia Institute of Technology
-- Faison, a Charlotte-based development and investment firm that has done mostly retail development
-- Hines, a New York-based office development firm
-- Cousins Properties, an Atlanta-based general purpose developer
Trask said the University is in discussion with one firm in particular. The eventual partner will help financially support the Central Campus overhaul and will help supervise its construction.
Trask said that he has received countless offers over the years from groups interested in developing Central Campus, but that he went to top firms first.
"We invited them," Trask said. "We tend to pre-qualify."
Trask said the University has not had a development partner before with a scope as large as reshaping an entire campus. He added that he expected subdeals with other developers for separate parts of new elements on Central.
"I hope we can begin the planning in earnest over the summer and get in the ground by 2004," Trask said.
The first phase will include the addition of 1,000 beds to Central, although Trask did not know what form those beds would take. He said it could be possible that they would be a mix of apartments and more dorm-like residences with private bathrooms but not kitchens.
He added that the first phase of construction should include some dining facilities and also a gathering place, such as a bookstore or cafe, and possibly some recreation facilities or office space. Trask said that although he would like the transportation component to be part of the first phase, he thought the University could get by with using buses for a while longer.
Trask said the idea of building a monorail from East to West through a new Central Campus is still as viable an option as it was earlier this spring when he first proposed the idea--but that buses, light rail or other technologies might be effective as well.
"Everyone's making fun of me for it," he joked about considering the monorail. "We're looking for an East-West route that's more effective than Campus Drive and there are half a dozen things you could look at."
The proposed campus transit system is just one of the many innovations administrators are planning for Central Campus, all of which would involve a complete gutting of almost every current structure in the 275-acre area. The overall project could take up to 20 years to complete and is expected to cost more than $200 million. The Board of Trustees gave preliminary approval to the plan at its February meeting.
Officials hope a new "University Village" will rise up in the area, complete with a "Main Street" that includes new apartments for 800 undergraduate students and at least 200 graduate and professional school students, faculty and staff housing, a hotel, an amphitheater and an expansion of the Sarah P. Duke Gardens.
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.