As construction on the long-awaited Fraser Centre gets further underway, drivers will have to get used to some changes in downtown State College.
Fraser Street is currently closed while construction crews erect a massive tower crane at the adjacent construction site. It will be the third such crane in State College, joining the two cranes at the Metropolitan construction site that currently dominates the skyline.
Courtney Hayden, communications coordinator for the State College borough, says Fraser Street will reopen on Thursday – but only as a one-way street.
For the majority of the time the Fraser Centre is under construction, Fraser Street will only be open to northbound traffic heading from Beaver Avenue to College Avenue.
Hayden says construction on the large residential-commercial development is expected to wrap up in August 2016.
The Fraser Parking Garage is also currently closed and is scheduled to reopen on Thursday. Permit parking holders have already been notified, and are being redirected to the Beaver Avenue Parking Garage.
Once crews finish setting up the crane, Hayden says they’ll also prepare an unloading area on Beaver Avenue. Crews will use one lane of the street in front of the construction site to unload equipment and building materials directly into the site, while impacting traffic as little as possible.
“We don’t expect any real issues on Beaver Avenue from this,” Hayden says. “They’ve already been doing unloading there, and we haven’t had any major hiccups.”
Joy Rodgers-Mernin, owner of The Nittany Quill on Fraser Street, says she does have some concerns that the temporary Fraser Street one-way set-up will negatively impact her business.
However, she also says the borough government has been very willing to work with the businesses of Fraser Street – even pushing the dates of the street closure back so business owners could take full advantage of the busy end-of-semester weekends.
“We’ve been through construction before, like when the sidewalks were redone recently, but we understand it has to be done,” Rodgers-Mernin says. “We just have to carry on.”
When completed, the Fraser Centre will combine condominiums, retailers, restaurants, underground parking and a hotel. The project has been under development in different forms since 2007, going though different proposals and developers before construction began last fall.
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