Drexel looks west with expansion plans

The president of Drexel University is interested in opening a four-year private university in Sacramento, where a prominent developer has proposed to donate land.

Dr. Constantine Papadakis toured the site last week and met with community leaders in Placer County.

The university campus is proposed for 600 acres, and an adjacent 500-acre community would be developed to finance the campus.

The land for the university would be donated by the Tsakopoulos family, William and Claudia Cummings, Wayne and Mary Prim and their partners.

Papadakis said the land is a remarkable opportunity.

"This is such a good project," he said. "It is so unique. We would be a great benefit to the Sacramento area."

The proposal must still be approved by the Placer County Board of Supervisors and Drexel's board of trustees.

Supervisor "Rocky" Rockholm was one of the community leaders who met with Papadakis. He was impressed with the college president.

"He gives me hope that we will have our private university here," Rockholm said. "If Drexel is involved, it will be top quality."

A prior sponsor for a university on the land backed out. That makes Supervisor Robert M. Weygandt cautiously optimistic.

"I have not heard from Drexel and I have not met the president," he said. "In the end, for me, there will either be a committed project from a quality university or there won't be. It sounds good, but the substance of the commitment is what is essential."

Although not a done deal, Papadakis said he is excited about building and running a 6,000-student university in Sacramento.

The Regional University project was first proposed to the county by KT Communities Corp. about four years ago. It would consist of a 600-acre campus and an adjacent 536 acres that would feature a community of about 2,300 houses, apartments and development focused on other uses.

The land for the campus would be donated to a university and the remaining acreage would be sold to a builder, with the net proceeds to go to the university for construction costs, Kyriakos Tsakopoulos, president of KT Communities, has said during an earlier interview.

Tsakopoulos is the son of developer Angelo K. Tsakopoulos, who, along with partners, owns the proposed project site.

"Nowadays, it is very difficult to open a campus of any significant size anywhere because of the cost of infrastructure," Papadakis said. "The donation of that land by the Tsakopoulos family and their partners makes it possible for this to happen."

Christian Brothers, a Catholic order that was set to establish a school on the site to be called De La Salle University, withdrew its sponsorship.

Papadakis said he has known about the project for about five years, since he was approached by Angelo Tsakopoulos about the project.

But the Greek-born Papadakis was not able to expand to California because Drexel was opening a law school, a major task that would take four years.

He later learned from Angelo K. Tsakopoulos that Christian Brothers had backed out. Papadakis was immediately interested.

In California, Papadakis said, there are more potential students than in the Northeast.

Papadakis said Sacramento is underserved by private universities.

"I can assure you a lot of students from the Sacramento area want to go to a private university," he said. "Many do leave Sacramento for a private university and they don't return. So you have a brain drain."

Papadakis, a civil engineer, once worked for Bechtel. He has been president of Drexel for 12 years.

Julie Hanson, the KT Communities project manager for the proposed university, lauded Papadakis' leadership and vision.

In a press release, she noted he had doubled full-time undergraduate enrollment, increased freshmen applications from 3,500 to 21,500 and increased the university's endowment from $90 million to $640 million.

Papadakis said it would take six years for the Drexel university to grow to 6,000 students. That would happen only after all the approvals are given for the project.

Papadakis said the university's board of trustees and management have been trying to figure out how to respond to the flatness of population growth in the Northeast.

"We identified that that strongest growth of population in 18-year-olds will be in California, Texas and Florida," Papadakis said. "So we started thinking about how to export our brand to another state."

Now, he said, the university is not looking at any site other than Sacramento. He plans to go to his board in October with a project design.

He said that an emphasis on business administration and nursing might be a good fit for the new campus.