Citing sluggish real estate market, Philadelphia-based Drexel U. scraps plans to build campus in California
The Sacramento Bee
August 22, 2011
In a nod to the region's hemorrhaging real estate market, Drexel University officials announced this week that they are backing away from a plan to build an undergraduate campus west of Roseville.
Even as Drexel entered the picture in 2007 as a potential partner in developer Angelo K. Tsakopoulos' plan to fund construction of a university through the development of some land he would donate, the once white-hot real estate market was cooling off.
This week, with home prices still falling, officials of Philadelphia-based Drexel notified Tsakopoulos and Placer County that they don't see a way to build the campus in the foreseeable future.
"They understand what has happened to the real estate market," said Drexel Provost Mark Greenberg. He said the university's would-be partners agreed that "the original premises of the deal did not exist."
The plan, first floated in 2000, was for Tsakopoulos and his partners to donate 1,150 acres to a university, which could use the commercial and residential development of 550 of the acres to fund campus construction.
