New $91M ARL Building at Innovation Park Receives Approval From Penn State Trustees

Penn State’s Board of Trustees on Friday approved plans for a new $91.1 million building that will be the first step in creating a unified campus for the university’s Applied Research Laboratory (ARL).

The four-story, 80,000-square-foot facility will be located at 335 Innovation Boulevard at the western end of Innovation Park. ARL, which is self-supporting enterprise, will fund the project through $64.6 million in borrowing and $26.5 million from its reserves, according to information presented to the board’s Finance and Investment Committee on Thursday.

Sara Thorndike, senior vice president for finance and business, described the new building as “an interdisciplinary research hub,” that “will provide space for relocated research programs and provide capacity for research program growth.”

It will have spaces for research activities, offices, conference rooms, computing.

Established in 1945, ARL at Penn State is one of only five Department of Defense University-Affiliated Research Centers and is primarily sponsored by the U.S. Navy. It has more than 1,500 employees and does about $400 million in annual research.

Penn State completed an ARL master plan in 2023 with the aim of “establishing a cohesive and secure campus that will drive interdisciplinary research, further recruitment and retention of talent, address security concerns and support a facility renewal plan for aging infrastructure,” Thorndike said.

University representatives who gave an overview of the plan to College Township Council in August 2023 said its goal is to create a 90-acre campus built out over 50 years. While the building approved on Friday is within the bounds of the existing Innovation Park, about 60% of the plan requires an expansion of the Regional Growth Boundary and Sewer Service Area, as well as rezoning for a portion of the land.

“A lot of their buildings are aging or may not be suitable for their current use,” Neil Sullivan, university planner, said last year. “One of the impetus of looking at a master plan for them is to get them in a new home with appropriate facilities and so that the buildings could be located synergistically with one another, so that they could have more efficiency with the research and maybe through synergy have even better ideas.”

Timing of the buildout for later phases is uncertain, Sullivan said, and will include “specialized buildings for unique research” as ARL wins new contracts or needs arise. The plan presented to council showed more than a dozen new buildings over 50 years.

“It really is dependent on what their needs are at the time,” he said.

The ARL building is one of four capital projects totaling $324 million approved by the Board of Trustees on Friday. The others include $89.9 million for renovations and additions to the Sackett Building and a new $96 million classroom building at University Park, as well as $47 million for an Academic Learning Center at Penn State Harrisburg.

Trustees also authorized a ground lease at University Park for a private developer to construct and operate a new housing complex to meet anticipated enrollment growth.