UB Moving 50 Employees into Downtown Buffalo, Freeing Up Space for Expanded School of Nursing

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- The University at Buffalo plans to move several of its key fund-raising offices and their 50 employees into the Jacobs Executive Development Center (JEDC) and its adjoining carriage house at 672 Delaware Ave. as the university continues to increase its presence in downtown Buffalo.

The move, scheduled to occur during winter break at the end of the current semester, is part of a plan that also will free up space in Wende Hall on UB's South (Main Street) Campus as the future home for an expanded UB School of Nursing better positioned to meet community needs.

Marsha S. Henderson, vice president for external affairs, noted that "as the university moves more deeply into implementation of its UB 2020 plan, we are solidifying our corporate and community relations strategies and our plans for an expanded physical presence in the downtown sectors of the City of Buffalo.

"At the same time, we are focusing on growth and investment in our academic programs in conjunction with plans to raise UB among the ranks of America's top public research universities," Henderson added.

David L. Dunn, UB vice president for health sciences, said the move of the development staff to the JEDC will free up Wende Hall for redesign and renovation to create a new home for the School of Nursing. The school currently is located in four floors in Kimball Tower, a former dormitory, on the South Campus.

"With our community, New York State and our nation confronted with critical health-care issues that include a critical shortage of nurses, an expanded nursing school will help meet community needs," Dunn said. "It also will provide expanded educational opportunities to prepare individuals for careers in nursing and provide advanced degrees for nurses seeking additional career opportunities and responsibilities."

The school and its degree programs have been designated as State of New York High Needs programs and have been receiving additional state support to expand the size of its faculty and student body in response to severe nursing workforce shortages in the state and across the country. The school is planning to increase the number of baccalaureate degrees it awards annually from 110 to 200 and increase the number of students enrolled in its master's and doctoral programs to prepare nursing faculty for the future.

A larger nursing school also will create an expanded presence on the South Campus for UB's Academic Health Center. With the move of the UB School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences to an expanded home in a renovated Acheson Hall on the South Campus, which is scheduled for 2011, all five schools constituting the Academic Health Center will be united on one campus. The others, already located on the South Campus, are the School of Dental Medicine, School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences and School of Public Health and Health Professions.

Henderson, noting that development offices moving to the JEDC will include those overseeing corporate and foundation relations, said UB is "significantly advantaged to have the opportunity to engage corporate and philanthropic partners in this beautiful, historically significant building."

Also moving from Wende Hall on the South Campus will be other offices that are part of the university's fund-raising Office of University Development, including those focusing on planned giving, annual programs and donor relations and stewardship.

The JEDC was given to the university in 1999 by Jeremy M. Jacobs, chairman and chief executive officer of Delaware North Companies and chair of the UB Council, who designated it and an adjoining carriage house for use by the UB School of Management.

The management school's Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership (CEL), established in 1987 to assist regional economic development, has been located in the JEDC in recent years. Tailored for established business owners and leaders, CEL counts more than 700 alumni who employ more than 25,000 Western New Yorkers and are worth nearly $3 billion to the local economy. The highly successful program will continue to operate out of the JEDC until new downtown office and classroom space is located.

UB will continue to use the JEDC for university meetings and events. It plans, however, to stop leasing it to the public for private events after November 2008. Henderson stressed that all contracts for private events at the JEDC through November 2008 will be honored by the university.

With the upcoming purchase of the former M. Wile building, now known as Century Centre 2, UB will own six buildings in downtown Buffalo. In addition to the JEDC, they include the New York State Center of Excellence in Bioinformatics and Life Sciences at Ellicott and Virginia streets, Educational Opportunity Center at 465 Washington Street, Research Institute on Addictions at 1021 Main

St. and the Ira G. Ross Eye Institute, which will house the clinical programs of the Department of Ophthalmology in the UB School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences and will open later this fall at 1176 Main St.