State Buildings

Big Ten basketball teams have issued a warning to Penn State: Build a new arena or forget about hosting conference games, athletic director Jim Tarman told the board of trustees. Penn State men's and women's basketball teams play in the 6,846-seat Recreation Hall. Plans for a 15,000-seat arena have been drawn up but no timetable for construction has been set. "Big Ten people have said we're not playing you as long as you're playing in Rec Hall," Tarman said. After Friday's meeting, board president J. Lloyd Huck said the trustees recognized Rec Hall was inadequate.

Three years ago, the proposed use of waterless urinals in the Comcast Center let loose a stream of labor indignation that threatened the tower's status as America's tallest green building. Get ready for some real commotion. Gov. Rendell is pushing for Pennsylvania's legislature to enact a state building code that would require environmentally friendly, energy-efficient construction. Whether he wants both residential and commercial development included is not yet known. Rendell was short on specifics in his call for a green building code, which he made ever so briefly in his Feb. 4 budget speech.

Gov. Rendell's office is scheduled to announce this morning that Pennsylvania has sold the 19-story office building at 1400 Spring Garden St. to Tower Investments Inc. for conversion into residences. The real estate development firm will pay $25 million for the building, at the corner of North Broad Street, under a contract signed Thursday, according to Tower. "It's the most important corner on North Broad Street," said Tower owner Bart Blatstein, whose previous projects include Avenue North, at Broad and Cecil B. Moore Avenue.

Gov. Corbett has been largely silent on the issue that had been a hallmark of his campaign. But opponents of his desire to privatize Pennsylvania's liquor stores have activated a lobbying machine this year with help from the very workers most in jeopardy: the unionized clerks who stock shelves and operate cash registers. Only two months into its lobbying bid and a week ahead of Corbett's budget speech to address a projected $4 billion deficit, the union representing a majority of liquor store clerks says its work is gaining traction.

For 15 months it has unfolded, practically unnoticed, in a Philadelphia courtroom, one of the longest civil trials in Pennsylvania history. The context is unprecedented, and the stakes are enormous. At issue is nothing less than whether state taxpayers should pay for a gleaming new $200 million PennDot headquarters in Harrisburg - or whether a giant chemical company should pick up the tab instead. The saga began six years ago, when a five-alarm fire damaged the former state Department of Transportation building, a 30-year-old, 12-story structure next to the state Capitol.

Phoenixville Hospital has received state approval of a $2.9 million plan to buy land and a building from West Co. in what may be the first step in the relocation of West's Phoenixville operations. The state Health Department on Sept. 2 granted the hospital permission to buy the West Co. Technical Center building on Route 113, with 13 acres of land, according to a state health official. Officers of the West Co. and the hospital said no date had been set for the sale. Both are major Phoenixville employers, with the hospital providing 750 jobs and the manufacturer 385 jobs.

Earl McCollum leans out of his Kim's Quick Snack lunch truck and tells of the day earlier this winter when metal plates on the Botany sign dislodged in a gust and crashed 10 stories below on the sidewalk at Broad Street and Lehigh Avenue. Mothers taking babies to a health clinic across the street screamed and ran, covering their heads. Commuters scattered. McCollum, 56, of West Philadelphia, ducked inside his truck when he heard the racket. "I thought the building was falling down," said McCollum, his face framed by the bricks and cemented-over windows of the enormous former suit-manufacturing factory behind him. Miraculously - for this is one of the city's busiest intersections, with thousands of commuters and nearby workers passing daily - no one was hurt.

Gov. Rendell wants to sell the 18-story state office building at Broad and Spring Garden Streets just north of Center City. The Department of General Services has retained Dallas-based Trammell Crow Co. to sell the building and lease space elsewhere in the city for the 1,000 employees in 18 agencies who work there. Ed Myslewicz, department spokesman, said Trammell Crow has identified 11 sites, including some buildings not yet built, that could house the agencies. He would not name the sites.

You can barely walk in the place. The shelves are stacked closely in the one-room Conshohocken Free Library, with hardly enough space for passage between the short aisles. Books are crammed together. The personal computer is on a table that partially blocks the magazine and periodical display. The copying machine is in the building's entryway. The borough's library board wants to correct those conditions. Board member John Ondik said in an interview last week that Conshohocken needed to raise $275,000 to match a state grant.

Killing two election-year birds with one stone, Gov. Florio yesterday announced plans to build a 2,000-bed medium-security prison in this struggling Cumberland County community. In what Florio called a "two-fer," the prison would ease chronic jail overcrowding and at the same time create 1,000 jobs and pump $30 million into the local economy, he said. And the governor made no attempt to hide the clear political boost the project provides him. "In our effort to put away the bad guys, the good guys win a double victory," he announced to an overflow crowd of local supporters at a Bridgeton City Hall news conference.