Construction of new St. Joseph's dorm to cause traffic stoppages on City Avenue through late March

Construction work on a new dormitory at Saint Joseph's University's Hawk Hill campus will affect traffic on City Avenue through March 27.

The traffic stoppages will occur on weekdays at 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. to allow the subsurface blasting needed to build Sister Thea Bowman Hall at City and Cardinal avenues. The stoppages will affect drivers heading northbound between Cardinal and 59th avenues in Philadelphia and those traveling southbound between Cardinal Avenue and Lapsley Lane in Lower Merion Township, according to PennDOT. 

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During subsurface blasting, holes are drilled into in-ground rock masses and filled with explosives. The explosives are detonated to break the rock into smaller pieces that can be more easily removed and transported offsite. 

Five minutes before each detonation, three air horns will sound. One minute before each detonation, two air horns will sound and all pedestrian and vehicular traffic in the area will be stopped. After the blast, a five-second air horn will sound indicating that the operation has concluded.

Several safety measures have been put in place to protect students and residents during the blasting. The explosives will be escorted to the construction site by Philadelphia police and the Philadelphia Bomb Disposal Unit will be onsite the entire time explosives are on St. Joe's campus. A 50-foot "blast zone" will be established around the construction site on the 5800 block of City Avenue, and the noise and vibration of the blasts will be monitored to ensure they don't reach dangerous levels.

Sister Thea Bowman Hall – named in honor of the late educator, evangelist and social justice advocate, who is a candidate for sainthood — is expected to house 578 first-year students starting in the fall of 2025. There also will be a small grassy quad between the residence hall and the nearby Maguire-Wolfington Welcome Center. 

Last summer, St. Joe's also purchased a 12-acre property on the other side of the welcome center. A live stream of the dormitory construction can be viewed online.

The new dorm is part of St. Joe's decade-long Master Plan, a campus transformation project that includes renovations to the Maguire Athletic Center and the O'Pake Recreation Center, and the construction of a pedestrian underpass connecting the Philadelphia and Lower Merion sides of the campus.

Construction on the Post Crossing — a 21-foot-wide, pedestrian bridge under City Avenue — caused road closures and traffic shifts in recent months. The project was initially scheduled to be completed by this month, but it is currently on-pause due to the blasting work for the residence hall construction. 

"This (pause) is to limit traffic impacts to the community," said Kevin Mueller, senior director of construction and planning for the project. "We are ready to set the bridge structure over a two-week period once subsurface blasting operations complete, most likely in March."

Along with its 125-acre Hawk Hill campus, St. Joseph's has a 24-acre University City campus, the result of its merger with the University of the Sciences in 2022. It also gained a Lancaster campus after absorbing the Pennsylvania College of Health Sciences in Lancaster.