Business Wire founder Lorry Lokey announced a $10 million donation to the University’s new Integrated Science Complex at a groundbreaking ceremony Thursday.
His donation raises his total contributions to the University to about $32 million, Gov. Ted Kulongoski said, making him the largest academic donor in school history.
Lokey, who has also contributed to renovations at the School of Music and Dance, tore down a yellow curtain at the event, revealing his identity as the namesake of the complex’s first phase – the underground Lorry I. Lokey Laboratories.
Lokey, who sold Business Wire to Warren Buffet, joked about his mother’s advice to him about how to spend money.
“She’d say ‘why don’t you just dig a hole in the ground?’” he said to applause.
Comparing building the underground complex to farmers planting crops, Lokey called his donation “10 million bucks of seed money,” adding that “Oregon will be harvesting this one” for years to come.
“So much for my mother’s theories on holes,” he said with a grin.
His contribution to the complex, the first new science building on campus since 1990, raises the total contributions to the University’s Campaign Oregon fundraising drive to $421 million. The campaign’s goal is $600 million.
Calling the states of Oregon and California “sinners” in spending on higher education, he said he wants the University, not the University of Washington, to be “the jewel of the Northwest.”
University President Dave Frohnmayer thanked Lokey for the gift, saying Wednesday was a “festive and really landmark day.”
Kulongoski lauded the Oregon Nanoscience and Microtechnologies Institute (ONAMI) initiative, which combines private and public funds. He said nonotechnology “is not pie in the sky.”
“Nanotechnology is about hope,” he said.