Downtown University Plans to Make Plaza Sweet
Pace University is embarking on a transformation of One Pace Plaza, the central building of its Lower Manhattan campus, to include new academic spaces, a modernized residence hall, and a state-of-the-art performing arts center. The rebuilt theater is slated to serve not only the university’s performing and creative arts programs, but also to act as a central gathering space and cultural venue for the Lower Manhattan community. The modernized One Place Plaza is also being designed to lower carbon emissions and improve energy efficiency.
The high-rise portion of One Place Plaza, a residence hall known as Maria’s Tower, will gain additional dormitory rooms. In combination with two other new dormitories owned by Pace—at 33 Beekman Street (the tallest college residence hall anywhere in the world, opened in 2015) and 15 Beekman (now under construction)—this will allow the university to exit a third residential facility it has leased for years, at 55 John Street.
The ongoing Pace renovation, which began in 2017, has transformed a campus that takes up multiple square blocks and occupies the site of the former New York Tribune building, in which Pace was founded in 1906, during an era when Park Row was a district of newspaper offices.
Pace has funded the campus renovation project, in part, with proceeds from the 2016 sale of yet another student housing facility, a 15-story former office building at 106 Fulton Street that the University bought and converted into dorm rooms in 1999. This transaction brought in more than $60 million.
The number of students enrolled at Pace’s campus in Lower Manhattan has more than quintupled since the start of the 21st century. The increased headcount appears to be driven, at least in part, by Lower Manhattan’s soaring reputation as a desirable place to live, work, and study. The influx of undergraduates, combined with the availability of dormitory space, has also transformed Pace from an erstwhile commuter college into one that draws students from around the nation and the world.
But Pace’s appeal for college-bound young people is also rooted in its academic stature. In 2017, a research paper issued by a team of economists at the Equality of Opportunity Project ranked Pace University second in the nation for propelling students who begin life in the nation’s bottom 20 percent of income distribution into the top 20 percent. (The New Jersey Institute of Technology was the only institution that ranked higher.)
Additionally, Princeton Review ranks Pace as one of the best colleges in the Northeast, while U.S. News & World Report rates its environmental law program as third in the nation, and the Hollywood Reporter lists Pace’s undergraduate and graduate performing arts programs among the 25 best in the world.