Drexel's new president outlines plan to revitalize neighborhood

Drexel University's new president, John A. Fry, on Tuesday outlined a five-point plan to improve the neighborhood, including an expanded safety-patrol zone and a loan forgiveness program for employees who buy homes in the area.

In his first major address to the university community, Fry also pledged expertise and fund-raising support for the area's public elementary school and an effort to improve the business district along Lancaster Avenue.

Fry, a former University of Pennsylvania executive who was a key architect of Penn's successful plan to revitalize its neighborhood, hopes to make history repeat itself.

"Let us mark today as the beginning of a new phase of a high-impact university-community partnership that will lift Drexel University and its surrounding neighborhoods to new heights," Fry said, drawing a standing ovation at the school's convocation.

He said he wanted Drexel to become the country's "most civically engaged university."

Fry, who became president Aug. 1, lamented what he sees in Drexel's Powelton and Mantua neighborhoods: littered streets, dilapidated houses, and broken streetlights. As Drexel has grown, students are moving deeper into the neighborhoods.

"It's an environment which is not necessarily an inviting one, and it's an environment that houses over 5,000 of our students," said Fry, who was hired in March after eight years as president of Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, where he also launched land-development projects. "It's kind of chaotic."

Fry also announced that Drexel had put the president's house in Strafford up for sale and will find a house in the campus neighborhood - a symbolic step. Dubbed the Orchards, the 2.8-acre Montgomery County estate, donated by an alumna and her husband, is on the market for $2.7 million.

He will not live in the house, but will remain in the Haverford area, where he is renting a house and where he lived while working at Penn. His two children attend the Shipley School.

Since coming to campus, Fry has been meeting with politicians, community leaders, and civic organizations, looking to reestablish the relationships he had as an executive at Penn.