University Plaza to close for new bldg.

Maimonides High School '96 Newton, Mass. On the corner of 38th and Walnut streets, one wall covered with hand-painted billboards advertising various student groups and events, sits a one-story retail complex. Known as University Plaza, the building has housed around a dozen stores, including the University Book Store, for more than 30 years. As of August 14, however, the campus landmark will close its doors forever, making way for a large new Wharton School facility. The 11 current stores will have to leave the building in the weeks following June 30, when their leases expire. The facility itself will be demolished. Rising three stories over Locust Walk and six to seven on its Walnut Street side, the new Wharton facility will provide the school with much-needed classroom and office space. University administrators awarded the space to the prestigious business school over a competing request from the Psychology Department. The building's impending closure has left many of its current residents -- two bookstores, one store for music lovers, a travel agency, a place to buy flowers and one to buy comic books, two restaurants and a health food shop -- pondering uncertain futures. For some, the future will amount to nothing more than a short move down the street. The University Book Store, managed by Barnes & Noble College Bookstores Inc., will double its size to 50,000-square-feet in its new home as the anchor tenant of the Sansom Common complex two blocks away, on the 3600 block of Walnut. But for the other stores, finding new locations in the University City area has proved difficult. One, Classical Choice, a favorite haunt for classical music and jazz devotees, has already moved to a new Center City location. Others, parts of multi-store chains, will fold their inventory into other locations. Out of Time comics will consolidate around its Center City store. Vibes, one of three music stores leaving the campus over the past year, also has other stores, the nearest in Princeton, N.J. The closing will leave Spruce Street CDs as the campus' only music store. Barnes & Noble will also sell a limited amount of music. For other owner-operated businesses, however, there is no other location to fall back on. The Seed, a health food store, is closing for good, and the situation at the Fiesta Jr. Pizza diner is equally grim. University Plaza has long been said to be a temporary structure, its plot of land awaiting bigger and better things. The Penn bookstore has been University Plaza's main tenant, but with its impending move to Sansom Common, University Plaza has become eminently expendable. Nevertheless, it remains unclear when construction on the new Wharton building will get underway. A recent $40 million gift from Jon Huntsman Sr. -- who made his millions as chief executive of America's largest private chemicals concern, Huntsman Corp. -- is the largest ever given to a business school. While Huntsman specified only that the money go to a "strategic priority," Wharton officials had previously said they were looking for a $40 million gift to name the new building. The project is a top priority of the school. A $10 million donation from the Koos, one of Taiwan's leading financial families, was specifically earmarked for the new facility.