Donor breaks ground on bldg.

Around 200 students, faculty and special guests gathered together yesterday at 40th and Locust streets to officially break ground on the new $22 million, 70,000-square-foot Robert Schattner Center at the School of Dental Medicine. Named for 1948 Dental School graduate Robert Schattner -- whose $4 million donation is the principle gift to the facility -- the state-of-the-art center will house clinical care facilities, classrooms and conference rooms for the school. At the ceremony -- which was attended by University President Judith Rodin, Dental School Dean Raymond Fonseca, Democratic State Representative Jim Roebuck, City Council member Jannie Blackwell and Schattner and his wife -- Schattner made the initial dig into the ground with the same shovel used for the construction of the Thomas W. Evans Museum and Dental Institute in 1912. Schattner, quiet and reluctant to speak, credited Fonseca with the success of the project. He continued by relating the first time Fonseca showed him the plan for the building, calling it "state-of-the-art, a dream and a vision." Commenting on the ceremony to start work on the center, Fonseca said, "We've been blessed with a truly beautiful day and perhaps it's an omen of the good things to come." "With the construction of the Schattner Center? we'll enter the new millennium the same way we began, poised to drive the standards of excellence," he added. Directly following Fonseca, Rodin gave a short speech in which she called the area around the Schattner Center "the new moving center." Upon completion of the construction, the new building's three floors will enhance both patient care and student education, according to Dental School officials. Blackwell -- whose district includes West Philadelphia -- focused on the new facility as a center for neighborhood dental care, highlighting the fact that thousands of the school's annual patients are area residents. And Associate Dental Dean James Galbally used his brief appearance on the stage to thank the architects, engineers, board of overseers and others who made funding for the Schattner Center possible. Minutes later, Fonseca closed the ceremony by presenting Schattner -- who he called "one of [Penn's] best friends" -- with two framed prints. The first print was of the Evans Building, while the second contained a print of the new Robert Schattner Center. Fonseca advised Schattner to "hang them side by side, the past and the future."

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