Peter J. Liacouras - Temple Town

Temple Town

Liacouras also sought to impart an urban planning vision for Temple University in a concept he called "Temple Town". He invested considerable effort into redeveloping the University's "main campus" -- with the development of on-campus housing at both sides of the campus, planning for new classroom and laboratory facilities to replace antiquated facilities, and perhaps most notably, the development of an arena on campus on land adjacent to the campus sold to the University by the car dealership that occupied the space.

The arena, originally named "The Apollo of Temple" (a pun on phrase The Temple of Apollo), was later renamed "The Liacouras Center", in his honor, though it is still known as "The Apollo" in common parlance. The arena houses the intercollegiate basketball teams of the University and other athletics facilities, but a main focal point for its development was the desire of Liacouras to have academic convocations on-campus.

The planning vision to inculcate local businesses along a stretch of the inner main campus was not successfully achieved, however, until after his tenure. His planning vision failed to convince local planning leaders to move the local regional rail station on the far eastern side of the campus in closer to the campus (away from the low-income housing that one walks by on the way to the campus). The "Temple Town" concept was sometimes criticized as an effort to insulate the University's main campus from the surrounding north central Philadelphia neighborhood, and his efforts to promote an esprit de corps, having painted messages on wood structures covering decrepit infrastructure adjacent to the University's Broad Street gateway were sometimes ridiculed.

His planning vision, however, extended to the development of academic programs globally, with programs now located in London, Rome, Tel Aviv, Ghana, Seoul, and Beijing.

Finally, his planning vision extended to the development of a new Temple University Hospital facility on the University's Hospital campus (serving Allied Health Professions, Medicine, Podiatric Medicine,and Dentistry programs), and expansion of the Hospital as a business with satellite locations around the metropolitan Philadelphia area.