The John R. Oishei Foundation, Western New York's largest private foundation, announced Wednesday that it has contributed a $5 million donation to UB's new School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences in downtown Buffalo.
The medical school, which will cost $375 million total and will comprise seven stories and 540,000 square feet, will be constructed in 2016.
"The Oishei Foundation recognizes the new UB medical school as a game-changing addition to the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus. It will redefine our region as a hub for the very best in health care," Oishei Foundation President Robert D. Gioia said in a press release. "With this gift, we join UB as fellow catalysts for change that will dramatically enhance our community's economic vitality and quality of life."
The medical school has thus far received funding from the state, individual donors and private companies. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who broke ground on the campus Oct. 15 and said, "When we put the shovel into the ground today, that was a shovel toward the new future of Buffalo," signed NYSUNY 2020 legislation in 2011. This law yielded an NYSUNY Challenge Grant, which has primarily funded UB's venture.
When the school opens, approximately 2,000 students, administrators and professors will have their work moved downtown.
The state has contributed $35 million to UB's Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus. The Buffalo News reported that the Oishei Foundation's gift helped UB reach roughly the midway point in its private fundraising efforts.
"Throughout its history, the [Oishei] foundation has consistently invested in improving education and health care, and this gift does both," said UB President Satish Tripathi in a press release. "This gift will have a profound impact on this priority project for our university."
In September 2012, the Oishei Foundation donated $10 million to Kaleida Health for naming rights to the new Women and Children's Hospital of Buffalo. This hospital, which will open on UB's medical campus, is being renamed the John R. Oishei Children's Hospital.
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