Office moves make way for campus development
Several administrative units move to Temple Administrative Services Building
Moving trucks and cardboard boxes have become a familiar sight at Temple over the past several weeks, as several administrative departments have moved their offices to make way for future Main Campus development.
By Thanksgiving, the University Services Building (USB) will be completely vacated, with more than 800 employees moved out as part of the first phase of the Temple 20/20 campus development plan.
Approximately 200 employees from USB and elsewhere on Main Campus have moved to the Temple Administrative Services Building (TASB), located in Philadelphia’s Hunting Park section, about a mile north of the Health Sciences Center. Departments now located at TASB include Institutional Advancement; Internal Audits; Purchasing; Grants and Cost Accounting; Creative Services; HRS Development and Support; Accounts Payable; TU Press; Human Resources and the Physician Practice Plan administrative staff.
The building, located at 2450 West Hunting Park Ave, boasts amenities that offer a level of convenience and familiarity for administrative staff: a green courtyard, dry cleaning pickup, shoe repair services and an on-site fitness center. The building, which formerly housed a railroad car manufacturing plant, was completely remodeled in 2007, just before Temple University Health System offices moved in.
“The new space is very nice,” said Jennifer Trautwein, associate vice president of Institutional Advancement. “Other TU staff members already located here have been very welcoming, and the people who run the building are responsive and friendly.”
Trautwein concedes that the hardest part of the move was saying goodbye to her old space in 1938 Liacouras Walk. “But once you come to terms with the fact that you’re in a new space, it’s not a big deal,” she said. “In fact, the move itself was very easy because we had great people helping to orchestrate the logistics.”
Despite the fact that these departments have moved further north, Temple is working to keep them connected to Main Campus — and vice versa — so that operations at both locations remain seamless for all parties involved. So far, the university has started a van service to make sure employees can easily move from Main Campus to TASB for meetings or training. In addition, Human Resources, Accounts Payable, Purchasing and Accounting continue to have a presence on Main Campus to assist with day-to-day operational matters.
While the move included departments once located in buildings other than USB, a major goal was to move those departments located in the USB to other locations to pave the way for its demolition, slated to take place over the holiday break. Some departments formerly located in USB have been relocated to other space throughout Main Campus.
“USB sits on a premier development site for the university,” said Michelle Lai, director of finance and operations. “When the opportunity presented itself to expand on that, we decided to take advantage of it to build something new that will incorporate that corner of Broad and Oxford streets into the rest of the university.”
The plan is to create a new, multipurpose building that will include student housing, parking and retail space. The new building is the part of an ambitious effort to revitalize campus using existing space, rather than expanding into surrounding neighborhoods.
“[The 1600 block of North Broad] is busy, with a tremendous amount of traffic from pedestrians, cars and SEPTA,” said Lai. “All you see right now is a parking lot and an office building. With the new building, everyone coming up Broad Street will know that they’ve just set foot on Temple’s vibrant Main Campus.”
