A portion of a heavily traveled road in downtown State College will be closed for three days while a tower crane is installed for construction of a high-rise condominium hotel.
West Beaver Avenue will be closed between South Atherton Street and South Burrowes Street beginning Monday, June 8, PennDOT wrote in a news release on Wednesday. The closure will be in effect to facilitate the staging of a tower crane to be used for construction of the nine-story Nittany Residence Club at 321 W. Beaver Ave.
The official, 3-mile-long detour will direct motorists to follow Park Avenue to University Drive to East College Avenue in order to return downtown.
Work is expected to be completed by Wedneaday, June 10.
State College Borough Council approved the closure in early May, as previously reported by StateCollege.com. At the time, Council President Evan Myers said one of his concerns was that diverting traffic from the two eastbound lanes of Beaver Avenue to one eastbound lane on Park Avenue would cause backups.
Borough Manager Tom Fountaine said the detour has been used for similar work in the past.
“This has been pretty typical of the traffic pattern changes that have occurred when we’ve installed cranes and other projects in the past and College or Beaver, either one, had to be closed,” Fountaine said. “Certainly there are increases in traffic, but this has to be detoured onto PennDOT rights of way.”
Myers also said he worried it would increase traffic on neighborhood side streets if drivers familiar with the area do not use the official detour, as he has observed happen in the past.
Responding to another question from Myers at the May meeting, Fountaine said using the roadway is the only feasible option to erect the crane.
“There’s not sufficient room in the right of way in the alleys,” he said. “Consistently over the past 10 years, as projects have been built, it’s been a two-lane closure for those crane installations and they typically are closed for three days. This is pretty typical and pretty normal for crane installation.”
Changeable message boards are in place approaching the area with information about the closure and detour. PennDOT’s Traffic Management Center will also send information to GPS navigation providers regarding the closure, according to information presented at the May 4 Borough Council meeting.
The sidewalk on the opposite side of Beaver Avenue from the construction site will remain open to pedestrians.
With ongoing work on West Calder Way for the borough’s Calder Way Project, New Alley will be temporarily converted to two ways with 24-hour flaggers and lights at night provided by contractor Leonard S. Fiore to maintain access to nearby impacted properties.
Once the crane installation is completed, the long-term lane shift currently in place on West Beaver Avenue near the construction site will return and is scheduled to be in place until September.
Council also approved a closure of the same section from June 21 to June 23, 2027 to dismantle the crane.
The Nittany Residence Club is a planned 70-unit building that offers one- to three-bedroom luxury condominiums for sale to individual owners, who can use them as part-time or vacation homes but not as permanent residences. When the owner is not staying at the condo, they can choose to place it in the hotel inventory for overnight guest stays, with the owner receiving income and a percentage going to the hotel operator.
Penn State alumni Gary Brandeis, Jim Venture and Jamison Morse are developing the project, and Brandeis’ Scholar Hotel Group will operate the hotel. It is slated for completion in 2027.
