A rendering of the Buccini Pollin Group residential project at the south entrance of the STAR Campus. Once complete, the 235,000-square-foot residential complex will feature studios, one- and two-bedroom apartments ranging from 600 to 1,100 square feet. The two buildings will be connected by a glass skybridge, providing space for a plaza and a residential courtyard.

Apartment complex coming to STAR

Article by Mike Chalmers Photos by Kathy F. Atkinson and courtesy of the Buccini Pollin Group May 21, 2025

Project will bring residential component to research campus

A vibrant learning-working-living community has always been the long-term vision for the University of Delaware’s Science, Technology and Advanced (STAR) Campus.

The learning and working parts of that vision are well underway: STAR Campus has 1.2 million square feet of modern classrooms, laboratories, offices and health clinics, and more than 3,000 people work on the campus every day.

Now the living part is coming into focus, with the groundbreaking earlier this month for a $71 million residential complex featuring 229 market-rate apartments in two seven-story buildings at the south entrance to the STAR Campus. Buccini Pollin Group, a real estate company based in Delaware and Maryland, is developing the site near the Tower at STAR and the Chemours Discovery Hub.

“This is one big, bold step toward bringing this vision to reality,” said UD President Dennis Assanis at the May 8 event. “We’re securing the future of innovation for the state of Delaware at the STAR Campus, and this development will help us continue building and discovering.”

Officials gathered on Thursday, May 8, for the ceremonial groundbreaking for the $71 million residential complex featuring 229 market-rate apartments in two seven-story buildings at the south entrance to the STAR Campus. Buccini Pollin Group, a real estate company based in Delaware and Maryland, is developing the site near the Tower at STAR and the Chemours Discovery Hub.

Chris Buccini, founder of Buccini Pollin Group and a long-time supporter of the University, said Assanis and his wife, Eleni, were integral to the launch of the project by helping to ensure that its design would fit with the long-term vision of the STAR Campus as a community with places to live, eat and shop.

“At BPG, we want to be around the best organizations in the state, and there’s no one better than the University of Delaware,” Buccini said. “Thank you for entrusting us with this important piece of property.”

BPG’s involvement in the STAR Campus goes back more than 15 years: It helped decommission the Chrysler assembly plant that had occupied the site before UD bought it in 2009 and then built the Bloom Energy plant, which was the first non-UD tenant on the site. BPG also built the UD bookstore on Main Street.

“This is one big, bold step toward bringing this vision to reality,” UD President Dennis Assanis said. “We’re securing the future of innovation for the state of Delaware at the STAR Campus, and this development will help us continue building and discovering.”

Once complete, the 235,000-square-foot residential complex will feature studios, one- and two-bedroom apartments ranging from 600 to 1,100 square feet, said Mike Hare, executive vice president of development for Buccini Pollin Group. The two buildings will be connected by a glass skybridge, providing space for a plaza and a residential courtyard.

Hare said the complex will also feature a pool with outdoor grilling and dining areas, a pickleball court, a fenced dog run, an indoor half-court basketball and fitness center with boxing and yoga spaces, a resident lounge, a communal kitchen and a game room with billiards. The site will have 231 dedicated parking spaces, as well as bike storage.

In addition to the Tower and the Chemours research facility, the STAR Campus is home to Bloom Energy, the Health Sciences Center, the Ammon Pinizzotto Biopharmaceutical Innovation Center and the FinTech Innovation Hub, which includes the Grain Exchange restaurant on the ground floor. The University broke ground last year on the Securing American Biomanufacturing Research & Education (SABRE) Center next to the Ammon Pinizzotto facility, which will be a workforce-training and research-testing site in the biotechnology field.

“At BPG, we want to be around the best organizations in the state, and there’s no one better than the University of Delaware,” said Chris Buccini, founder of Buccini Pollin Group and a long-time supporter of the University.

At the north end of the STAR Campus, the Thomas R. Carper Train Station connects workers and residents with cities along the East Coast.

Assanis said the STAR Campus has the capacity for at least another 5 million square feet of development in the future. Indeed, he said the tremendous potential of the STAR Campus was a significant reason he came to the University of Delaware in 2016, when only the Health Sciences Center and Bloom Energy existed on the site.

“It needed an amazing amount of work, and Eleni said, ‘This is your opportunity,’” he said. “This is a field of dreams, and now those dreams are becoming a reality.”

A rendering of the Buccini Pollin Group residential project at the south entrance of the STAR Campus. The complex will feature a pool with outdoor grilling and dining areas, a pickleball court, a fenced dog run, an indoor half-court basketball and fitness center with boxing and yoga spaces, a resident lounge, a communal kitchen and a game room with billiards.