The University of Colorado is naming its rising medical campus in Aurora after billionaire entrepreneur Philip Anschutz, whose recent $25 million gift put him on top of CU’s donors list.
The campus, which generations of Coloradans have called Fitzsimons after the old Army base that was once on the land, will become the Anschutz Medical Campus in honor of the $91 million the family has given the university in the past six years, CU said Monday.
“This is really huge,” said Roy Wilson, chancellor of the Health Sciences Center.
Most of the latest gift will go toward completion of a second research tower jutting into the Aurora skyline, a boost to the 12-story complex scheduled to open in the summer of 2008.
Not completing that tower would have been “a huge blow to our research facility,” Wilson said. “We just didn’t have the money.”
CU is still at least $15 million short of the $205.8 million needed for the building, but Wilson is confident the university can raise the rest of what it needs.
The state is investing $335 million over 25 years to build classroom buildings at the medical campus. The university is on its own, though, to raise money for research complexes.
CU administrators said they hope the latest gift will not detract from their plan to persuade lawmakers to increase funding for the campus next year.
“I don’t want people thinking we have all this money,” the chancellor said.
The campus is strapped when it comes to paying salaries and for operations, said CU president Hank Brown. A recent study from the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems shows the medical campus gets just 41 percent of the state funding per student that its national peers receive.
“Obviously, operating money is a real challenge,” he said.
Brown praised the Anschutz Foundation’s longtime generosity, beginning in 2000 when it gave $25 million for the University of Colorado Hospital’s outpatient center.
Other gifts included $30 million for the inpatient center and $10 million for an addiction treatment center.
“Every step of the way, Phil Anschutz has been there to help us when we faced our greatest crisis,” Brown said.
The Anschutz Foundation had no official statement about the new name. When contacted by The Denver Post, a spokesman for Anschutz said the naming wasn’t Anschutz’s idea but that he hoped his gift would become a catalyst for other donors interested in helping build up Colorado’s biotech industry.
The University of Colorado hospital already has named its inpatient and outpatient centers after Anschutz, who founded Qwest in 1988 and was named the nation’s 28th-richest person last year by Forbes magazine.
Regents must approve the new name to make it official, but their sentiment was clear.
“This has been one of the most wonderful things that has happened” to CU, said regent Pete Steinhauer.
CU and the city of Aurora proposed to the U.S. Department of Defense in 1995, when the Army post closed, that the university turn the area into a state-of-the- art campus for medical, pharmacy, nursing and dental education and research.
The original hospital, known since 1920 as Fitzsimons General Hospital, opened in 1918.
CU officials expect that many people will still refer to the biotech industry area surrounding the campus as Fitzsimons.
Staff writer Jennifer Brown can be reached at 303-954-1593 or jenbrown@denverpost.com.
This story has been corrected in this online archive. Originally, due to an editing error, it suggested a research tower at the University of Colorado medical campus in Aurora would not have been built without a $25 million gift from billionaire entrepreneur Philip Anschutz. The money will be used to complete 1-1/2 floors at the 12-story complex.
