Officials to break ground today on new Dental School bldg.

The $22 million Robert Schattner Center will house clinical care facilities and classrooms on its three floors. Construction crews are set to break ground today on a new $22 million Dental School building at 40th and Locust streets. A $4 million donation from 1948 Dental School alumnus Robert Schattner is the principle gift for the 70,000-square-foot state-of-the-art facility. The Schattner Center will link the existing Evans Building with the Leon Levy Center for Oral Health Research and house clinical care facilities, classrooms and conference rooms for the school. Officials expect construction to begin tomorrow and the building is set for completion by September 2000. The Evans Building will also be renovated as part of the project. University President Judith Rodin, Dental School Dean Raymond Fonseca, Democratic State Representative Jim Roebuck, City Council member Jannie Blackwell -- whose district includes West Philadelphia -- and Schattner and his wife will attend the groundbreaking ceremony at 3:30 p.m. today. They will dig with the same shovel used for the construction of the Thomas W. Evans Museum and Dental Institute in 1912. "This is a very exciting time for the Dental School to have a new building," Fonseca said. "It will create a unified campus." Schattner's $4 million contribution is the biggest single contribution for the project, which is the first of its kind at the Dental School since the Levy Building was created in the late 1960s. The Dental School has also received a grant of $4 million from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services toward the cost of the building, which will provide facilities for oral and maxillofacial surgery -- procedures that could previously only be carried out in a hospital environment. Upon completion of the construction, the new building's three floors will enhance both patient care and student education, according to the Dental School. The first floor will include oral and maxillofacial clinics and other surgery facilities. And an atrium replete with food retailers -- including Bucks County Coffee, recently displaced from its old site across Locust Street from the Schattner Center -- and seating will be located on the ground level. The second floor will be the major entrance for the school's 16,000 annual patients who require evaluation and treatment, while the third floor will house the Dental Care Center, a major provider of care and training to students and faculty. Fonseca explained that it is difficult to construct new Dental School facilities because large amounts of funding are difficult to procure. "Schattner's contribution allowed us to move ahead," he said. "We don't have people that make large fortunes through dentistry so the type of donations we get from our loyal alumni are not to the magnitude of what you can get from other schools." "Evans didn't provide the opportunity for modern technology that this building does," Fonseca said. "The improvements in the Evans Building, along with what this building will provide, will really give us a state-of-the-art facility." The Dental School began a campaign about three years ago to raise funds from major sources, but the building itself has been under discussion since 1989. Schattner, of Bethesda, Md., is the president of Sporicidin International, which develops antimicrobial products. He is perhaps best-known for having invented Chloraseptic mouthwash. "[His contribution] really made a difference and allowed us to move forward and hopefully it's an example for others," Fonseca said. Schattner and Sporicidin have been in the news before. In December 1991, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and Federal Trade Commission seized Sporicidin's supply of Sporicidin Cold Sterilizing Solution, alleging that the product was "adulterated and misbranded." Under a 1993 settlement between the two sides, Sporicidin paid the government an undisclosed fine but admitted no wrongdoing.

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