Photo by Alex Vuocolo/West Philly Local.

Chestnut Square, a mixed-use development located at 32nd and Chestnut Streets, has added more retail to its over 360,000 square-feet of space. The building now contains a total of seven businesses in addition to 19 stories of student housing and other amenities like study areas and a computer lab.

The newest retail additions include Plaza Artist Materials & Picture Framing, Yogorino, and a branch location of Franklin Mint Federal Credit Union. Four other food establishments– Joe Coffee, Shake Shack, Zavino and coZara— are already in the lineup.

Drexel University students and some businesses will be moving in within the month, as construction finishes up just eight months after the project broke ground.

Rendering of Chestnut Square. Image via americancampus.com.

Plaza Artist Materials should open as early as the next two weeks, while Yogorino, Joe Coffee and Shake Shack should open by mid-October. The rest will open between December and January, according to Jason Wills, senior vice president of campus development at American Campus Communities (ACC).

Wills explained that ACC has made a concerted effort to bring in a mix of retail options that are interesting and local to the region.

“We could have filled the space three times over with chains, but instead we really wanted to make it a cool Philadelphia square that felt like a good place to go for an evening,” Wills said.

ACC’s portfolio also includes another West Philadelphia building, University Crossings, a 30-story campus-housing building at 15 N. 32nd Street. It is perhaps most recognizable as the building that towers above the Firestone Tires store.

Though University Crossings will soon be refurbished and potentially given retail on its ground floor, according to Wills, the two developments couldn’t be more different.

Chestnut Square’s inclusion of retail reflects Drexel University’s most current thinking about what it wants its campus to look and feel like. As shown in Drexel’s campus master plan, a big part of this involves building denser housing and adding retail and other amenities to its educational and residential areas.

Wills credits Drexel University president, John Fry, for this change in culture.

“Among the things that [Fry] has committed to is was work to bring students out of absentee landlord situations in the neighborhoods and bring them back on campus,” Wills said. “He has also really tried to activate and urbanize the campus core.”

–Alex Vuocolo