Staff Editorial: Schizophrenic visions

All is not well in the 40th Street corridor.

The western edge of campus has long been a target of University administrators, who hoped to turn the once decidedly run-down thoroughfare into a major shopping mecca for all of Philadelphia, as well as a fabulous asset to students, faculty, staff and neighborhood residents.

And while 40th Street is much changed -- for the better -- in the last five years, the number of retail vacancies in University-owned buildings is cause for concern on a number of fronts.

To begin with, the recent closing of the Papaya King leads to one fundamental question -- why was it opened in the first place? Did Penn need a vendor dedicated to selling only hot dogs and fruit juice? Did the demand exist?

The answer to the last question is pretty plain -- it did not. And so the University community is left with yet another retail vacancy.

At the same time, there has been an uncomfortable conflict between two major University initiatives -- attracting major retail dining locations to the immediate off-campus area and trying to keep students eating in the dining halls (and, when all else failed, forcing them to). The upcoming debut of Yoga Works on Walnut Street may be taken as a sign of a new battle between retail initiatives and the Recreation Department's new Pottruck Center down the street, whose upper floors will soon host yoga classes.

The University of Pennsylvania is, by necessity, and enormous bureaucracy with many different divisions pursuing very different goals. In the case of dining, and possibly that of yoga, these goals have clashed, and that is to no one's benefit.

University administrators at a very high level, namely, the president, provost and executive vice president, need to develop a coherent strategy to fill these holes -- and fast. The opening of the new used bookstore, though a welcome addition to campus, fills a space that had been vacant for longer than any current undergraduate has been at Penn.

Timetables such as that are unacceptable. Vacant storefronts do not a regional shopping mecca make.

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