Rowan Boulevard’s Barnes and Nobles Groundbreaking Brings in Large Crowd

Several dozen gathered Wednesday for the groundbreaking ceremony held to honor the kick off for construction on a new $300 million Barnes and Nobles bookstore project.

Dr. Leo McCabe, mayor of Glassboro, attended the ceremony, along with a number of other honored guests including Gloucester County Freeholder Joseph Brigandi, Jr., Council President Tony Fiola, NJ Assemblywoman Sandra Love, Assemblyman Paul Moriarty, Barnes & Noble College Booksellers President Max Roberts, Rowan University President Donald Farish, and Greg Filipek and Tom Fore, principals of Sora Holdings L.L.C.

The speakers focused on the construction of downtown Glassboro, including Rowan Boulevard. The building is the first addition to a new downtown area of Glassboro. This vision should be fully realized by 2014.

The new Barnes and Nobles will replace the bookstore already on Rowan’s campus and will serve to connect Rowan University with Glassboro’s business district. This new bookstore will be 36,000 square feet and will contain a 6,000 square foot café offering Starbucks products.

President Donald Farish announced there would be another building added to Rowan Boulevard next year, housing at least 300 more students. Farish also announced that the Mansion Park apartment complex would be housing freshmen the upcoming 2009-2010 school year.

“Due to the economic situation, we accepted 1,600 students, expecting only 1,400 to show up,” said Farish in his speech, adding, in a joking tone, “but all of the little darlings are showing up.”

The surplus of 200 students delayed plans to bulldoze Mansion Park to build a new freshmen housing facility. The on-campus apartments are currently fully occupied with incoming freshmen.

The new Barnes and Nobles was accredited with the hope of supplying immediate and permanent jobs to the community, considering the bookstore was not just for the Rowan community, but is meant to service the Glassboro community as well.

The new downtown area hopes to obtain around 60 retail stores and several restaurants in an effort to boost the economy of the entire community.

SORA Holdings L.L.C., the developer involved in the downtown Rowan project, has invested a major portion of the $300 million needed to undergo the entire construction taking place at the university.

McCabe, along with the honored guests, grabbed a shovel and broke the ground to symbolically begin construction of the new store and downtown landscape.