STAR Tower to reach its apex in August

The STAR Tower under construction in Newark will reach its highest point next month. Developer Delle Donne & Associates will hold a private topping off ceremony Aug. 22 for the new 150-foot structure at University of Delaware’s Science, Technology and Advanced Research Campus off South College Avenue.

The STAR Tower under construction in Newark will reach its highest point next month.

Developer Delle Donne & Associates will hold a private topping off ceremony Aug. 22 for the new 150-foot structure at University of Delaware’s Science, Technology and Advanced Research Campus off South College Avenue.

Topping off ceremony’s typically involve putting the final beam in place.

Slated for completion by mid-2018, the 120,000-square-foot Tower at STAR Campus –as it is alternatively known – will house state-of-the-art classrooms and research facilities for the university’s College of Health Sciences while providing three floors of office space to high-tech commercial tenants that have yet to be named.

The college, which already anchors the first phase of the STAR Campus, will expand that footprint into floors 2 through 7 of the new tower with the addition of its leadership team, along with its communication sciences and disorders department, and kinesiology and applied physiology department.
The College of Health Sciences relocated most of its operations into the Phase I redevelopment of the former Chrysler administration building across the street from the school’s David M. Nelson Athletic Complex about five years ago.

Other private enterprises have followed since Delle Donne & Associates completed work on the Phase II redevelopment of the former Chrysler building. Those tenants include the network and data center monitoring company SevOne, Christiana Care’s Glasgow Medical Center and Independence Prosthetics-Orthotics Inc., along with DTP@STAR, a business incubator run by the Delaware Technology Park.

The STAR Tower represents the third phase of construction for the 16-acre site on UD’s adjunct campus where Delle Donne holds a master lease and the first all-new project there since the university purchased the property from Chrysler in 2009. The steel-and-glass structure will be the third-largest building in Newark, short of the 17- and 16-story Christiana Towers student dorms on the north side of campus.

Next month’s topping off ceremony will come just weeks after state officials broke ground on a $50 million train station slated to open at the STAR Campus in early 2018.

Written by Scott Goss; Published by The News Journal