Design includes massive renovations

For most current undergraduates, the Perelman Quadrangle will never be more than a sign posted in front of Logan Hall. Only members of the Class of 2000 will catch a glimpse of the finished student center, just before they graduate. For now, only a wired fence erected on the eastern side of Logan, the hammering and drilling sounds coming from the building's interior and the construction workers eating lunch on the sloped hill near Williams Hall indicate a major construction project is in progress in the middle of campus. Scheduled to open in the beginning of 2000, the Perelman Quad is intended to satisfy students' needs for study and social space on campus, according to Provost Stanley Chodorow. Falling under University President Judith Rodin's 21st Century Project, the $69 million Perelman Quad will include meeting rooms, rehearsal space, offices, study lounges, cafes and indoor shops. "The Perelman Quad will be part of the living experience for Penn students," Chodorow said. "It is an effort to create at the center of campus? a social, performance, meeting, eating and function hall for the whole student body." The project will link Logan Hall, Williams Hall, Houston Hall and Irvine Auditorium together through landscape architecture. The official groundbreaking for the center occurred January 29 of last year. "All these buildings will be restored to their Victorian glory," Chodorow said. "The purpose of this design was to show everyone that the physical quality of the buildings should reflect the intellectual quality of the school." Perelman Quad construction will involve four overlapping phases, beginning with the renovation of Logan Hall over the past year. Logan's exterior was refurbished over the summer, and work on the interior will begin in a few months, Vice President of Facilities Management Art Gravina said. The work will restore the building's inside walls, main staircase and original sky light. Classrooms, four College of Arts and Sciences departments and an art gallery will occupy Logan Hall, which is scheduled for a Jan. 1, 1998 completion. "There will be classrooms all over this area," Chodorow said. "It will be the main classroom center of the College." The University will close Irvine Auditorium this summer to begin the second phase of the Quad's construction. Plans for Irvine include music and recital halls, rehearsal rooms and a lobby cafe, Chodorow said. Interior changes to Irvine will also improve the sound quality in the auditorium. The space above the main stage will be eliminated and turned into a rehearsal room. The new room will be dedicated to Emily Sachs, a member of the class of 1998 who died in June 1995. Sachs's parents are making a donation to the University in their daughter's memory, according to Perelman Quad Development Director Joanne Hanna. A music hall, also on the main floor, will include roughly 1,400 seats. And the basement will include rehearsal rooms geared toward performing arts groups, Chodorow said. Plans for Irvine also include a box office where students will be able to purchase tickets for sporting events, concerts, plays and other performances. "The idea here was that we should connect the student with the city," the provost said. Renovations to Williams Hall will begin in the summer of 1998, six months after the University community begins using Logan Hall. Perelman Quad construction will only affect Williams's ground floors and courtyard; the rest of the building will remain unchanged. The building's basement and multimedia classrooms will be converted into office space for student organizations. A two-story glass atrium study lounge and cafe will replace the courtyard where students currently park their bikes. The atrium will connect Williams and Logan halls. "This study lounge and cafe will be open very late, if not 24 hours," Chodorow said. Due to its structural complexity, Houston Hall will be the last of the four buildings to undergo construction, he added. After renovations, Houston Hall will contain more office space, meetings rooms and rehearsal rooms. In the new plans, Bodek Lounge will be transformed into a study area. Detailed plans for the basement level of Houston Hall remain unclear at this point, though committees have been working since 1995 to allocate space in the renovated Houston Hall. Designed to be the center of the entire Perelman Quad, Houston Hall will function "as the living room of the University," Chodorow said. The project will wrap up in 1999 with a redesign of the landscape between the four buildings, currently a narrow walkway. According to Gravina, the landscape is a crucial element of the Perelman Quad. "Many schools just have one building student centers," Gravina said. "What's neat about Perelman is that it is a center that is connecting four old buildings using its landscape." The open plaza between the four buildings will be called the Wynn Commons, after University Trustee and alumnus Steven Wynn, who donated $7.5 million to the project last year. The plaza will extend from the west side of Irvine Auditorium to the east side of Logan Hall. An official entrance to the Admissions Office will overlook the plaza. The statue of former Provost William Pepper, currently located outside College Hall, will be removed. And plans call for the creation of a large seating area on either side of the plaza. The student center's main entrance will be located on the eastern side of Logan Hall, facing Houston and College halls, Gravina said. An outdoor amphitheater, spanning half the width of Logan Hall, will lead down into the plaza from the entrance. An entrance on the north end of Logan Hall will tie Locust Walk to the entrance of Perelman. A stage-like platform with a large Penn insignia will be erected at the southern end of the plaza, in front of Irvine Auditorium and directly across from the Logan Hall entrance. The same architecture firm that built the Fisher Fine Arts Library, Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates, has handled plans for the project. · Alumni donations will cover more than half of the Quad's $69 million cost, said development director Hanna. She has established a $38 million fund raising goal for the project. Donations so far have raised $34 million. The University will borrow most of the remaining $31 million, while some of the money will also come from other Facilities Management funds, Hanna said. The $38 million in donations includes the $20 million from University Trustee and alumnus Ronald Perelmant that kicked the project off, and Wynn's $7.5 million donations. Contributions from reunion classes, individual donors, parents and families make up the remaining $6.5 million. Reunion classes that originally raised money for the now-defunct Revlon Center willingly shifted their donations to focus on the Perelman Quad once the Perelman project replaced plans for Revlon, Hanna said. Rodin and Chodorow developed the Perelman Quad instead of the previous administration's plan to construct the Revlon Center, also a student center, at 36th and Walnut streets.