Until recently, the 83-year-old, five-story Aaron Building on 12th Avenue in downtown Altoona was an eyesore, with Penn State Altoona's Downtown Devorris Center on one side and Heritage Discovery Center on the other.
Now the nearly renovated building is the latest in a Penn State outreach that has invested millions of dollars into a downtown that has struggled for decades with blight.
Cynics might question why the university would invest in an area almost three miles away from its pre-eminent location in the Ivyside section of the city.
Penn State Altoona Chancellor Lori Bechtel-Wherry says the university's growing commitment to downtown fulfills the campus' need for more space and its hope to help the city resurrect its former chief commercial district.
The renovation has added classrooms, offices and a cafe, provided room for staffers previously housed in rental space at the Discovery Center and unified the building with the Devorris Center, which is the headquarters for continuing education at the campus.
The university recently began renovating the former WRTA building on the other side of the Discovery Center as home for the office of Development and Alumni Relations, and it has acquired a former church property outfitted with woodworking equipment on West Chestnut Avenue for its visual arts studies program.
''The ideal is, I suppose, to have the campus all in one location,'' Bechtel-Wherry said.
But Penn State Altoona needed more space, and it made business sense to get it by renovating downtown, Bechtel-Wherry said.
The university isn't planning to allocate money for a new building at Ivyside in the foreseeable future, she said.
Open space there is at a premium anyway, and renovation is cheaper, she said.
The $3.5 million Aaron Building project probably cost a fourth as much as new construction, said Joe Orr III of project contractor J.C. Orr & Son.
Project architect Lee Stults of O'Connor Gordon Pratt of Hightstown, N.J., estimated a new facility on undeveloped ground would have cost 15 percent more, mainly for infrastructure.
Furniture retailer W.S. Aaron constructed the building as an addition to the three-story building that's now the Discovery Center.
The Aaron renovation ties the Devorris and Discovery centers together, helping increase their value.
At 2.9 miles from the Ivyside campus, the downtown complex is a little farther away than the distance across the University Park main campus, officials said.
The renovation expands a commitment that began with community programs and courses in the former Playhouse Theater, now the Devorris Center, in 1999.
Amtran bus service connecting the campus and downtown is a necessary component.
Revitalization
The Aaron project supports center-city revitalization, city officials say.
''Penn State is a huge player in our downtown redevelopment,'' Mayor Wayne Hippo said. ''It's pretty easy to say they're our No. 1.''
It's a ''mutually beneficial'' relationship, he said.
''They need to provide ongoing services,'' Hippo said. ''We happen to be in the position of needing this exact type of fit.''
The college's first home in 1939 was the former Webster Elementary School building downtown, preceding the post-World War II move to Ivyside.
Altoona nurtured the college then; the college is returning the favor, continuing education department director Jack Sinclair said.
The university is trying to make the downtown complex feel like an extension of the Ivyside campus through integrated communication systems, complementary scheduling, facade styling and amenities like a cafe, second offices for faculty and on-street banners.
''It is part of the campus,'' Sinclair said.
There are four classrooms in the basement, offices and the cafe on the first floor and offices on the second floor.
The college plans to put its communications department on the third floor, at a cost of about $1 million in renovations and equipment. It hasn't decided what to put on the top two floors.
The university created a single entrance for the Aaron Building and the Devorris Center.
Workers built a reception area in Aaron to serve both structures and will transform the former Devorris reception space into a conference room.
Students
Nontraditional and traditional students use the complex.
Nontraditional students find the downtown complex convenient for late afternoon and evening classes after work, Sinclair said.
Traditional students sign up for courses downtown to alleviate conflicts at Ivyside or if they prefer to stay away from morning classes.
Full-time adult student Andrea Jones of Colver likes the downtown complex.
''It seems more personal,'' said Jones, who's studying letters, arts and sciences.
''More one-on-one,'' said traditional freshman Andrew Culp of Altoona. Instructors downtown are more likely to ''put you in the lesson,'' he said.
Still, not many traditional students at Ivyside like to go downtown, said sophomore Kaytlyn Hackenberg of Lewisburg. They believe it's harder to get to, she said.
She's taking a public speaking course downtown because it fits her schedule better and because the twice-a-week, half-semester, extra-long classes are helping make up for dropping a course she didn't like last semester.
The only negative is parallel parking, she said.
Sophomore Christopher Parisi of Pittsburgh likes the new facility and smaller classes downtown, but he has to ride his bike or carpool with a friend in inclement weather.
The downtown complex has a different feel than Ivyside, said Jake Snyder, who teaches religion and music theory. ''It's vertical,'' he said. ''More like a big city.''
It reminds him of the College of Osteopathic Medicine in Philadelphia, where his son attends.
Educational training specialist Anna Rose Eckenrode finds working downtown the same as at Ivyside, except you need a car to go somewhere else on campus.
''I don't feel we're out of the loop,'' she said.
Renovation
The university hoped to complete the renovation - recently called the Penn Tower project - by August, in time for the start of classes.
Orr said his company has finished the critical elements, the four basement classrooms. They have ceiling-mounted projectors activated by computers professors operate from ''technology podiums,'' and wireless Internet is available throughout the building.
Workers updated the classrooms at the Devorris Center to match.
As with many renovations, workers encountered unforeseen challenges. They had to use jackhammers to remove a lightweight concrete ''topping'' on the first floor, Orr said. And they had to replace the elevator shaft after discovering gaps in the masonry that kept it from meeting fire-protection standards.
The Altoona Blair County Development Corporation created a single-purpose limited liability corporation called Altoona Development Group to serve as developer.
The group bought the building from a partnership of Maurice Lawruk and Don Devorris for $265,000. It borrowed $3 million from a bank for ''bridge'' financing to pay the contractors.
It replaced that with permanent loans of $1.6 million from a bank and $1.3 million from the Anchor Building grant program of the state, the city's Economic Development Loan Fund, the Greater Altoona Economic Development Corporation's facade rehabilitation loan fund and ABCD's Enterprise Zone loan fund. The group will receive repayments from Penn State on the loans.
Penn State put about $500,000 of its own money directly into the project.
The university is leasing the building, with payments that can go toward purchase at any time during the 15-year lease term, which the group can extend.
Mirror Staff Writer William Kibler is at 949-7038.
