Addition Planned for Penn State Spiritual Center

Penn State is planning an addition for its Pasquerilla Spiritual Center that will create an improved entrance and address water infiltration issues that have impacted a subsurface multipurpose gathering room.

State College’s Design Review Board on Tuesday received an overview of preliminary plan for the 2,654-square-foot addition.

The 26-foot-high, single story building expansion will be constructed on what is currently a patio area that sits above the below-ground Frizzell Room, Mark Saville, of project engineer HRG Inc. said.

With a canopy for vestibule entry, it will “repurpose the main entrance to the Pasquerilla Spiritual Center into a more focused point of arrival for the building that’s more obvious [than] the way it’s set up currently,” Saville said.

Among the project’s primary goals is to restore the Frizzell Room to active use by addressing longstanding water infiltration problems. Built in the 1970s for Eisenhower Chapel, the Frizzell Room predates the Pasquerilla Center, which opened in 2003 as a 30,000-square foot expansion of the chapel and was funded by private donations.

“They have existing problems they’ve been trying to address with water infiltration into that room below where the water’s been leaking off and on for quite a bit,” Saville said. “They’ve had several attempts to address those issues. The solution is to really build a new roof over top of that space, collect the runoff … and try to do as much as we can to capture as much of that groundwater and runoff adjacent to the building.”

The project will ultimately reduce both the impervious coverage by 1200 square feet and the amount of runoff from the building site, Saville explained.

The new construction also will create additional building space for a new 2,500-square-foot room to be used for meetings and multi-denominational prayer, Kate Czembor, of architectural firm DIGSAU, said. An existing 1,000-square-foot multipurpose room adjoining the addition will be converted to storage space, an additional restroom and a small huddle room for students.

All spaces within the addition will be ADA compliant, and the project will create accessible routes to the main entry and vestibules, according to Saville.

Construction is tentatively anticipated to begin in May 2027 and be completed in August 2028.

The Design Review Board voted unanimously to forward the plan to the Planning Commission, which will review it during its meeting at 7 p.m. on Thursday.