Iona College Breaks Ground on Business School Building
Real Estate In-Depth | August 7, 2018
NEW ROCHELLE—Iona College celebrated the official groundbreaking of its new business school building on July 27 with a ceremony that included alumnus and Board of Trustees member Robert V. LaPenta ’67, ’00H, officials from Iona College and the City of New Rochelle, and members of the local community.
Remarks were delivered by LaPenta, Iona School of Business Dean William B. Lamb, Ph.D., President Joseph E. Nyre, Ph.D. and Student Government Association President Hannah McGowan ’20, as well as New Rochelle Mayor Noam Bramson.
The new business school building, upon expected completion in the spring of 2020, will dramatically impact Iona by more than doubling the current academic space of the facility for use by faculty and students from both the School of Business and School of Arts & Science. High-tech learning spaces will include state-of-the-art classrooms and computer labs, a central atrium event space, case study and meeting rooms, faculty offices, a lecture hall, a business career center, an expanded trading floor classroom, and a media suite.
The new building is made possible through LaPenta’s generous $15-million gift announced in November 2015, to which he later added $2.5 million through a matching gift challenge, increasing his total donation to $17.5 million, the largest gift in the institution’s almost 80-year history. To date, more than 50 donors have made contributions to the project through the matching challenge.
“Today is a truly historic day for Iona’s School of Business, which stands stronger than ever following the groundbreaking,” said Dean Lamb. “We are deeply committed to continuous improvement, service to students, and community impact, and we are excited for 2020, when we will have a state-of-the-art space and a dramatically heightened student experience.”
“We have many people to thank for making this beautiful day a reality—Mr. LaPenta, who has generously invested in our future, and officials and community members alike in New Rochelle have also played a key role in securing a prosperous tomorrow,” said President Nyre. “To be able to offer our students the best faculty in their fields, complemented by state-of-the-art facilities, fits the vision of what we seek to accomplish here at Iona through our new business school building.”
Iona College is working with the architectural design and planning firm, Gensler, to design the physical spaces of the new facility, along with Langan Engineering, which is collaborating on the site plan and civil engineering work and JLL as the owner’s representative.