A TV camera sets up ahead of today’s official groundbreaking ceremony near 36th and Filbert. (Photo by West Philly Local).

Drexel University and the School District of Philadelphia officials broke ground today on a new facility that will house two public schools. The School District will lease the building from Drexel and the facility will house the Powel Elementary School (K-4), currently at 36th Street and Powelton Avenue, and the Science Leadership Academy Middle School (SLAMS), which opened in 2016 at Drexel’s Dornsife Center for Neighborhood Partnerships and recently moved into space at 3600 Market Street. 

The new building will be located near 36th and Filbert Streets, the site of the former University City High School, which was closed in 2013. Drexel purchased the 14-acre site, between 36th and 38th Streets, that also included another shuttered school, Charles Drew Elementary, in 2014. The demolition of both schools was completed in 2015.

In May 2019, Drexel entered into an agreement for the development of the 87,000-square-foot, two-story building with Wexford Science and Technology, the developer of uCity Square – an office, lab and retail complex currently in the works in that area. The $40 million school project is funded through a combination of private and public funding secured by Drexel, including the Philadelphia School District and New Markets Tax Credits, aided by generous contributions from the Lenfest Foundation, Wexford and Ventas, a leading real estate investment trust.

The new facility will provide students an opportunity for a K-8 option in the same building. Most of the students enrolled in SLAMS come from Powel Elementary.

The Drexel University-School District of Philadelphia partnership on the new school is reminiscent of the arrangement University of Pennsylvania has with Sadie (Penn) Alexander School in another West Philadelphia neighborhood – Spruce Hill. Drexel is reportedly aware of how Penn Alexander, an award-winning school, helped drive gentrification in the neighborhood. Changes included steep increases in real estate prices and an estimated 30 percent drop in African American residents.

“They [Drexel] actually have partners in the neighborhood to address affordable housing in a way Spruce Hill never had when that project got going,” SLAMS principal Tim Boyle told The Philadelphia Tribune in June.