While the quadripartite commission gradually broke down, the UCSC entered a period of relatively good fortune. Building Number Two at 3508 Market Street was officially opened in November 1969. The Monell Chemical Senses Center (Building Number Three), which adjoined Number Two at 3500 Market Street, followed suit in April 1971. The UCSC was now also attracting groups from outside the University community to build in the Science Center complex. As early as February 1969, the federal Food and Drug Administration had announced plans to construct a new laboratory at 34^th and Market Streets, but this project never moved beyond the planning stage. The same was true for a planned "Science Center Hilton" conference center and hotel complex on 38^th Street just south of Market Street, announced in March 1970. Then in February 1971, the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) announced that it would construct a 15-story office building on the northeast corner of 36^th and Market Street for the use of "the four major socially oriented [federal] agencies," namely the Departments of Housing and Urban Development; Health, Education and Welfare; and Labor; and the Office of Economic Opportunity. This new building was to be called "Gateway Building Number One." Two months after the GSA, the UCSC announced its own plans for a $20 million low-rise office complex, including laboratories, offices, and a parking garage, on the south side of Market Street between 36^th and 37^th Streets.

Even as it attracted new developers to its complex, the UCSC came near to financial ruin; its net worth was minus $44,136 as of 30 April 1971. As part of its effort to remedy this situation, the Center initiated a campaign to raise money from interested companies and individuals. By January 1972, donors had pledged $307,870 to the Science Center, of which money $129,810 had been paid. The Center's net worth was minus $16,919 by the end of May 1972. One year later, this figure had grown to plus $129,406, and the UCSC generated its first ever operating surplus in 1973. From this point through to the end of the decade, the Center produced an operating surplus in seven consecutive years.

At the same time that it improved its finances, the UCSC sought to modify and clarify its public image. In early 1971, the Center's president, Dr. Randall Whaley, stated that the mission of the UCSC was "the application of scientific and technical knowledge to help solve the problems of society and to improve the quality of life." He also stated that one of the Science Center's major goals was "to stimulate economic growth through the creation of new profit-oriented businesses." In April 1971, the UCSC Board of Directors even discussed changing the name of the center to the "Delaware Valley Science Center" to suggest a new beginning. In July 1971, the UCSC created UNI-COLL Corporation, a non-profit subsidiary of the Center that would take over the University of Pennsylvania's computer center at Building Number One (3401 Market Street). Whereas Penn's computer center had been used primarily for Penn's own interests, UNI-COLL-with the help of a state of the art (for 1972) IBM 370 model 165 computer-was intended to "serve all institutional users fairly and without bias," in the words of its executive vice president, Robert Logan. The UCSC also attracted attention in January 1973 when it succeeded in bringing R. Buckminster Fuller, a noted thinker and designer and the inventor of the geodesic dome, to the Center as a "World Fellow in Residence." Later in the decade, the Science Center sought to change its public image in a more direct way by commissioning several sculptures for permanent display outside its buildings along Market Street. Perhaps the most notable of these sculptures is that of a human face, purchased in 1975, which now adorns the Monell Chemical Senses Center.

The UCSC had not yet escaped from controversy, however. The Gateway Center Corporation, the developer hired by the General Services Administration to build the Gateway Building, had backdated the lease for the land in its effort to win the initial development contract. The press, at the time when news about the Watergate scandal was first coming into print, alleged that massive political corruption was also involved, running all the way from the developer's nephew-the lawyer who signed the lease and held "a 25 per cent interest in Gateway"-to Pennsylvania Republican Hugh Scott, the Senate minority leader and a vocal defender of President Nixon. Though the UCSC was not directly involved in any illegal activity, the scandal surrounding the Gateway Building contract surely did nothing to improve its image. To make matters worse, the RDA threatened not to renew its five-year redevelopment contract with the Science Center, which was set to expire on 26 November 1973. Fortunately for the UCSC, the RDA granted several interim extensions of the contract so that the two parties could continue negotiations. Finally on 29 December 1975, a new five-year contract between the RDA and the UCSC commenced after being approved by the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and Philadelphia's City Council. In the shadow of all of this bad publicity, the Gateway Building officially opened at 3535 Market Street in the spring of 1973.