University officials presented plans to upgrade Hill Field -- with new benches, lighting and landscaping -- at the campus facilities and planning session of yesterday's University Board of Trustees meeting.
With these developments will also come a change in title -- the area will be renamed Hill Square.
The upgrades are meant to bring Hill Field to "the same standard as College Green," according to Vice President for Facilities and Real Estate Services Omar Blaik.
These upgrades are designed to allow "for the campus to grow and... still [keep] a significant open field for our students to play," Blaik said.
In addition to the landscape work, the area will see more development in coming years, with plans to build the McNeil Center for Early American Studies near 34th and Walnut streets.
Administrators are also looking at preliminary proposals for developing nearby spaces that currently serve as parking areas near 34th and Chestnut streets into student housing and retail options.
"The notion was that in the next few years, there will be a lot of investment in that square," Blaik said. The plan is "to create a very attractive public space at the edge of campus."
The Board of Trustees was also presented with the details of plans to renovate Annenberg Plaza, the space in front of the Annenberg School for Communication.
The $3.9 million plan, funded by the Annenberg Foundation and approved at February's Board of Trustees meeting, will include new pavings in warm colors, landscaping and lighting intended to create a more open and inviting space.
Together with Dean of the Graduate School of Fine Arts Gary Hack, Blaik outlined the proposed landscaping plans for the new Hill Square.
Because there is an approximate 10-foot difference from the edge of the field at 34th and Chestnut streets and the edge of Hill College House, the open space will include a "bowl-shaped" area, as well as a level space for playing.
Woodland Walk, the existing diagonal walkway that cuts across the field, will be upgraded with a wooden footbridge mimicking the pattern of a creek that once existed there -- a change that should help improve natural drainage.
Last year's celebration of 125 Years of Women at Penn will also be incorporated into the upgraded Woodland Walk in the form of granite benches inscribed with quotations from female Penn graduates.
Blaik said the public art on Woodland Walk is especially appropriate, as the site is across from Bennett Hall, originally home to the College of Women.
Work on both the Annenberg Plaza and Hill Square projects is scheduled to begin this summer.
