New home for College of Business

The College of Business Administration will soon be housed in its own building on UNO's Pacific Street campus near the Peter Kiewit Institute. A groundbreaking ceremony, scheduled for yesterday, was held to honor the private donors and individuals involved in the project.

"We had to raise a significant amount of money from the private sector to build this facility," said Louis Pol, dean of the College of Business Administration.

The estimated cost of the building is $31 million, but the college hopes to raise $7.5 million more to support new programs, new professors and other projects.

Two of the project's private donors were unveiled at the groundbreaking ceremony. Both the Mammel Foundation and the Scott family presented gifts towards the facility.

Both donors are also involved with the UNO community and provide scholarships for students.

"They really are tuned into the needs of our students. They really care about our students. They genuinely are concerned and want to help," Pol said.

Pol said that construction would most likely begin in August and that the college's new home would be completed in time for fall 2010 classes. "We are hoping for completion in the spring so we have time to make the transition," he said.

The 120,000 square-foot facility was designed by Holland Basham Architects and Gensler and Associates and will be located near 67th and Pine streets across from the Aksarben Village development.

"Our hopes for this project are pretty aggressive. We are looking at this as not only a wonderful new facility which will give our student, faculty and staff a great deal of additional opportunities, but we are also paying close attention to the location of the new building," Pol said.

The new facility will feature many more classrooms, an auditorium and an atrium. Previously, the college had been housed in Roskens Hall.

Jon Paul, a freshman pre-med and business major, said he saw both advantages and disadvantages to a new facility.

"The new building is going to give us more room so we can house more students and teachers. It will also give the college more prestige because people will look at it and see a nice facility, but it is also very expensive to build it - which will probably raise tuition," Paul said.

He also saw the location as a disadvantage, given that it would not be on the primary campus.

"Another kind of negative is that it will be on South Campus, which means people who don't live there will have to travel, but, other than that I think it will be a great thing. I'm excited to see how it will turn out," he said.

George Killian, the campus architect, said the project fit perfectly into UNO's 10-year plan, which involves several renovations across campus. "We will have a kind of big domino effect in place for the different buildings once the new College of Business building is built and then Roskens Hall is vacated," Killian said. "It's all really exciting; I think this is all right in line with our 10-year master plan for the campus. It's really neat to be able to be a part of it all."

By: Jillian Whitney - UNO Gateway Posted: 6/3/08