Construction began last week on the University of Delaware’s new financial services technology building, the latest project on the burgeoning STAR Campus.

While much of campus is shut down due to the coronavirus pandemic, construction workers are considered essential personnel and thus are able to continue working despite Gov. John Carney’s stay-at-home order. UD officials said they are monitoring all contractors for compliance with social distancing requirements.

The six-story, 100,000-square-foot building is a partnership between UD, Delaware Technology Park and Discover Bank. DTP will own the building, which it will fund with a below-market-rate loan from Discover. UD will lease space in the building once it is completed in November 2021.

UD officials said the $38 million building will foster collaborations between students and companies in the growing field of financial services technology, often referred to as FinTech.

The building, which will be located behind the biopharmaceutical building nearing completion, will contain a mix of university and private tenants.

UD’s Lerner College of Business and Economics will build a cybersecurity leadership center that will link Lerner’s cybersecurity management with the College of Engineering’s cybersecurity engineering and technology, a space for human-machine learning and social media data analysis and a multimedia studio.

Meanwhile, the building will allow for an expansion of DTP, which began in 1992 on Wyoming Road. A nonprofit collaboration between the state, university and private sector, the facility houses 50 start-up companies. It later added a second business incubator space in an earlier STAR Campus building.

DTP will lease space in the FinTech building to startup companies, who will have access to on-site business development resources. DTP will also move its offices to the new building.

The FinTech building is the latest in a series of large development projects on the former Chrysler site, which UD purchased in 2009.

The 271-acre site currently includes the UD health sciences complex, the technology company SevOne and the 10-story STAR Tower, which is occupied by UD, WILMAPCO and commercial tenants. Chemours’ research and development headquarters opened last month, and the biopharmaceutical building is slated to open soon, along with an upgraded train station.

Written by Josh Shannon; originally published in Newark Post.