CAMPUS BRIEFS: Thursday, September 17, 1998

Physical Plant annex to undergo renovations Fry said the project will involve building a fence around the building -- which houses the administrative offices of the department overseeing campus maintenance and electrical work, among other functions -- and landscaping the area around the fence. No timetable for the project has been announced. In addition, the building's 36th Street service entrance for vehicles entering the site will be closed. The University plans to tear down a brick wall separating the Franklin Building parking lot from the annex, creating a new general entrance to the site from Walnut Street. The changes are designed to complement the new Sansom Common retail complex by hiding the building behind new landscaping and eliminating the service entrance across the street from the complex's Xando coffeehouse and bar. The University may eventually use the area for possible retail development. If the site did become a retail store, Fry said the Physical Plant building would relocate to the old General Electric building at 32nd and Walnut streets. --EJeremy Reiss Power outage hits some University buildings An electrical outage cut power to seven University-owned fraternity houses and office buildings between 10:30 a.m. and 2:30 p.m. yesterday. The incident also affected the PennNet network, creating difficulties for people trying to access the Internet. The University posted an announcement about the outage on the upenn.general newsgroup, citing a failure in the electricity feed from PECO Energy Co. But a spokesperson for the utility said the company had no knowledge of any feed failures in the West Philadelphia area. The buildings affected by the outage were the Kappa Sigma fraternity house at 3706 Locust Walk; the Alpha Chi Omega sorority house at 3906 Spruce Street; the former Phi Sigma Kappa fraternity house at 3615 Locust Walk; the Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity house at 4028 Walnut Street; and the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity house at 307 S. 39th Street. The Fels Center for Government and the Psychology Office Building, both on the 3900 block of Walnut Street, also lost power . -- Binyamin Appelbaum