Penn to purchase 23.1 acres across the Schuylkill

Though most students might think of campus as Locust Walk or the Quad, Penn is expanding its premises across the Schuylkill River with a new land acquisition.

Penn Executive Vice President Craig Carnaroli announced in September that the University plans to purchase the DuPont Marshall Research Lab — a 23.1-acre property on Grays Ferry Avenue — for $13 million.

This purchase is the first instance in which Penn has bought land across the river for everyday purposes, a chance which Penn President Amy Gutmann said she “was prepared to jump on.” For a long time Penn had no specific expansion plans, she added, but was “open if the right opportunity [came] up.”

Penn owns several facilities beyond University City, but Gutmann said this acquisition is unique because “there’s a certain convenience to having land so close” to the center of campus.

Moreover, unlike other properties, the site will not serve only one specific need, “so we have the potential to use the land to expand the campus in the future,” Gutmann added.

This property will ultimately be used for several of Penn’s “ancillary operations,” Gutmann said.

In the short term, Carnaroli explained, Penn will move its Transit Operations facility from 32nd and Walnut Street onto the DuPont property — which “will ease the initial phases of construction of the Singh Nanotechnology Center,” he wrote in an e-mail.

The plot may also be used as storage space to free up on-campus land for other University purposes. Though there are no immediate plans to displace storage, Gutmann noted, this parcel presents the option of adding up to 7 percent more free space on campus.

Regardless of the long-term uses for the property, Gutmann said it “ensure[s] the physical future of Penn for decades to come,” noting that “as scarce as money is, land is even scarcer.”

Philadelphia City Council President Anna Verna said she is “very happy” about Penn’s expansion, calling it a “great use for this property, bringing more jobs and new development to the area.”

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