Harker: “Continuing on Our Path to Prominence”
We will continue to make measurable progress in the fulfillment of our strategic plan for the University. In the next few months we will be publicizing additional strategies and action steps on our Path to Prominence website. This will include important initiatives from each of the colleges as well as action plans based on the workings of many faculty and staff, including taskforces focused on creating a unified plan for promoting diversity for the University, developing a proposal for a University-wide Institute for the Environment, building a customized partnership to connect the U.S. Army’s needs in Aberdeen, Maryland, with UD’s strategic capabilities, and investigating the further expansion of our educational and research collaborations in the health sciences, among other initiatives. Each of these groups is helping us to develop priorities, and ensure that our activities directly support our mission and guiding principles. We are also continuing negotiations to purchase the Chrysler site adjacent to our Newark campus.
As we predicted, and the City of Newark feared, the University of Delaware is still pursuing the purchase of the Chrysler site. This will deny the City much needed revenue that they had hoped to capture as the site was put to other uses. Since the UD is a quasi public entity it is entitled to use eminent domain power to force the purchase of the site and they will not pay taxes to the City of Newark once they improve it.
Of course, the improvements should increase the value of surrounding land and businesses.
For the workers who lost their jobs this is a bad trade off. But the big picture is not so bleak. More University jobs, more events capacity, more prestige (very important to the UD right now – See: Biden). This is a somewhat warped example of creative destruction and a microcosm of what is happening in the economy overall.