A municipal parking lot in State College is slated for permanent closure soon as work begins on the long planned Town Centre project.
The Allen Street lot, located across from the borough building on the 200 block of Allen Street, will be closed as of Monday, May 13, according to borough officials.
In the planning since 2017, the State College Town Centre project will include a nine-story hotel with restaurants and a parking garage on the site of the Allen Street lot and four stories of commercial space at the site of the former Verizon building at 224 S. Allen. St. The new building will wrap around the existing Jeramar Building, which houses Cozy Thai and apartments.
“The initial work will primarily be underground utilities on the back end, but as a result of that there will be restrictions and limitations [on D Alley] by Friedman Park and also the parking lot will be out of service from that point on,” Borough Manager Tom Fountaine said at Monday night’s Borough Council meeting.
State College officials have said the 32 public spaces lost to the development will be replaced with a new municipal lot funded from proceeds of the borough’s sale of the Allen Street lot and former Verizon Building to developer Highland Holding Group for $1.93 million. The borough, however, has not confirmed a location for the new lot.
“As of right now, there has not been a determined location for the surface lot to relocate to,” borough spokesperson Kayla Lafferty wrote in an email. “There is currently no timeline or details to share.”
The Town Centre project is the result of a public-private partnership envisioned by borough officials for years to develop around and complement nearby existing properties on the 200 block of South Allen Street. Highland was selected in 2017 to develop the project, and in June 2019 the borough sold the lot and former Verizon Building to the developer.
A final land development plan submitted in late 2023 includes a 161-room Canopy by Hilton hotel, multiple restaurants and 15,000-square-feet of commercial space in a U-shaped building.
The commercial space is expected to include a restaurant incubator, and Highland Holding Group President Alex Sahakian said in December his team is already in discussions with potential operators for the space.
“Early in the process we had the idea of doing something that would be kind of a kitchen incubator type of scenario where we might have a number of different small kitchens we would invest in and then we could have operators come and run them and see if they could succeed with that,” Sahakian said. “So basically lower the bar for people to enter the food service. In some communities these are called restaurant incubators, food halls, that type of thing.”
On the hotel side, a 6,852-square-foot restaurant and bar open to the public and a three-bay ball room for up to 300 people will be located at ground level, with prefunction space and restaurant seating opening out onto an outdoor plaza that will surround the Jeramar Building, Feldman said.
Another 4,268-square-foot restaurant and bar with a tiered outdoor terrace will be located on the ninth floor.
The building is expected to open in January 2026, Warren Feldman, of project architect Nehmer, told the State College Planning Commission in December.
