University of Delaware debuts $180M Building X, eyes future projects

ORIGINAL SOURCE: Philadelphia Business Journal

The University of Delaware is opening its $180 million "Building X" to the first students and faculty this month as it preps for more capital projects.

The 130,000-square-foot science facility will house disciplines like quantum science, human disease, and the brain and behavior. It is being looked at as a collaborative space shared by both undergraduates and researchers with lab space as well as classrooms. After three years of construction, it sets the stage for the University of Delaware to begin to eye its next major capital project.

The concept of Building X is some seven years in the works. It is built on the site of the school's former McKinly Lab, which was damaged in an electrical fire in 2017. The school weighed its options to demolish the dated building, fix it, or repair and renovate it, ultimately deciding to tear the property down and build anew. The project was put on pause for over a year during the design stage when the pandemic hit, with construction ultimately kicking off in March 2022.

Just under three years later, the first of what the school anticipates will be 1,000 students annually are filtering into the building. Only 8% larger than the McKinly Lab by square footage, the building was designed in a way to efficiently utilize space and will house 66% more faculty than the old building, said Peter Krawchyk, the university's vice president for facilities, real estate and auxiliary services.

Departments like psychology, biology, neurobiology and more will be able to utilize the building, with a focus on technology and life sciences across the three-floor building.

"It is a classroom building and a research building, which was an intentional move by the university because the College of Arts and Sciences, they really want to expose students to cutting edge research," Krawchyk said.

Of the $180 million price tag, $41 million came from American Rescue Plan Act funding secured by the state.

More projects could be on the way. With Building X complete, the University of Delaware will turn its attention to its Science, Technology and Advanced Research (STAR) Campus.

The 272-acre campus is an innovation-focused redevelopment on the site of a former Chrysler automotive plant in Newark. The school currently has a million square feet of real estate in use or under construction on the site. Krawchyk said the master plan for the STAR Campus calls for as much as six to seven million square feet of development.

There, the school is plotting its 70,000-square-foot, $150 million Securing American Biomanufacturing Research and Education (SABRE) Center. It held a ceremonial groundbreaking last spring, but Krawchyk hopes construction on the project will begin in earnest this fall. The biopharmaceutical manufacturing building will be a site for vaccine and other medicine development and help those medications advance toward the market.

Another building on the STAR Campus that the school will look to fundraise for next is a research center for clean hydrogen. Further down the road, a new building for the College of Engineering could be another possibility on the STAR Campus.

Krawchyk noted that much of the capital planning at the University of Delaware will depend on market conditions, fundraising and financing. He added that the goal for the STAR Campus is to secure corporate partnerships that advance academic opportunities for students and allow the university to continue to build out its innovation campus.

"The discussion is really more, 'How do you work with the university currently?'" Krawchyk said. "Or, 'How would you plan to involve our faculty? Would you hire our graduate students?' Those sorts of things, that's kind of a bar that's being looked at."