Columbia B-School Gets $25 Million Gift

Columbia Business School said today (Sept. 5) that an anonymous donor pledged $25 million largely to support the construction of a new $400 million home for the school on Columbia’s Manhattanville campus.

Some $23.25 million of the gift will go toward construction, and $1.75 million will support the Social Enterprise Program, an initiative that helps students develop a perspective on how to apply business skills to social enterprise endeavors and align personal and professional values in careers that result in social benefits to the broader community.

The gift is the third major donation in support of the future Columbia Business School campus. The donor joins Henry R. Kravis ’69, co-founder, co-chairman, and co-CEO of Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. (KKR) and co-chair of the School’s Board of Overseers, who pledged $100 million for the project in October 2010, and Leon Cooperman ’67, chairman and CEO of Omega Advisors and also a member of the board, who donated $25 million to the new campus in April.

One of the two new buildings for the business school campus will be named after Kravis. They will alleviate the space constraints of Uris and Warren Halls which Columbia has said have become ever more apparent. “In order to continue to provide an unmatched student experience and remain a center for cutting-edge academic research, as well as to compete with its peer institutions, many of whom boast significantly more space per student, the school must expand the size of its facilities,” says Columbia.

The principal architect of the project, Liz Diller of the Manhattan-based firm Diller, Scofidio + Renfro, has said the two facing buildings will be “a kind of mini-campus inside of a bigger campus.”

Construction at the site has yet to begin, but demolition is under way and administrators have said they aim to have the new campus ready for use by 2020.

DON’T MISS: KRAVIS GIVES $100 MILLION TO COLUMBIA BUSINESS SCHOOL or COLUMBIA GETS $25 MILLION GIFT