Report tallies the growing vitality of U City

"The good life."

"A boomtown."

"On the move."

With those upbeat words, not used very much these days, University City boosters on Monday portrayed their rarefied Philadelphia enclave as an engine of vitality untouched by the malaise that has stalled +wages, economic growth, and real estate development across the nation.

An annual report by the University City District cited a litany of multimillion-dollar projects and other initiatives as evidence of prosperity in a neighborhood whose luck draws largely from the ambitions, deep pockets, and Ivy League power of the University of Pennsylvania.

The State of University City 2011 report reads like a 40-page public-relations brochure for the community that also is home to Drexel University, University of the Sciences, Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, and scientific business enterprises, as well as other academic and retail locations.

It tallies new restaurants and stores on the fringes, as well as big construction at the core of the neighborhood bordered by the Schuylkill and 50th Street, Spring Garden Street and Woodland Avenue.

"Everything that's happened in the past five years has just been off the charts in terms of how this neighborhood's come together," said Matt Bergheiser, who became executive director of the University City District (UCD) about two years ago.

As evidence of the district's unstoppable momentum, the report cites several multimillion-dollar economic-development projects and giant business deals:

The Hilton University City's $50 million Homewood Suites at 41st and Walnut Streets is being built; new research towers are rising at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and Penn's Perelman School of Medicine; a $90 million student-housing complex on Drexel's campus between 32d and 33d Streets is to be completed by 2016; and the 80,000-square-foot Krishna P. Singh Center for Nanotechnology at 3200 Walnut St. is expected to be finished in 2013.

UCD also touted the jobs retained in the conversion of the 30th Street U.S. Post Office into an Internal Revenue Service hub, and Penn's recent conversion of 14 acres of postal parking spaces into a $46 million park along the Schuylkill.

Most of the momentum emanates from Penn, which only last week reported that its $6.6 billion endowment returned 18.6 percent for the fiscal year that ended June 30. The university also is well ahead of schedule in a separate $3.5 billion fund-raising campaign, having raised $3.42 billion as of August, university officials said.

UCD's own budget has grown from $5 million since Bergheiser took the helm, to $8.2 million this year. That means even more money to market the neighborhood and to finance smaller initiatives.

Among them: a $400,000 effort, now under way, to build a public plaza on the south side of 30th Street Station, complete with tables, chairs, and greenery.