APM helps the UPEI Building a Legacy campaign

A couple of impromptu donations of $100,000 apiece helped UPEI kick off the second leg of its $50-million Building a Legacy fundraising campaign Monday.

The campaign, begun two years ago with a stated goal of $25 million, officially wrapped up Monday as university president Wade MacLauchlan announced that campaign chair Fred Hyndman had surpassed the goal by gathering $26.9 million in donations.

MacLauchlan congratulated Hyndman on his success, then announced that Summerside businessman Mike Schurman would be taking the Building a Legacy campaign toward its next goal — $50 million.

Within that goal is a sub-campaign, led by property developer Tim Banks, to raise $6 million in donations for planned expansion of the School of Business into a Centre for Enterprise and Entrepreneurship.

The centre will be built from the former residence at Marian Hall. “The other reason we’re here today is that we’ve got more work to do,” he said.

Banks, whose APM group is responsible for some of Charlottetown’s major property developments, said he was pleased to be asked to take on the business centre.

He said he and Schurman wouldn’t let themselves fall short of Hyndman’s fundraising success.

“Mike and I are pretty competitive,” he said. “Whatever Fred has done we’ll have to outdo.”

“How I’d like to start the campaign is our company is going to step up and we’re going to donate $100,000.”

The trick was soon matched by UPEI Chancellor Bill Andrew, an energy entrepreneur, who stepped to the microphone and chipped in $100,000 of his own.

“The podium is open if anyone else wants to step up,” MacLauchlan quipped.

The announcements were not the first financial support for the business centre.

ACOA Minister Joe McGuire announced that his department would contribute $1.69 million toward the centre. He said he sees UPEI and Holland College providing leadership that will help Prince Edward Island transform into a knowledge-based economy.

“There are a university and a community college playing to each other’s strengths in addressing a provincewide human capital challenge,” he said.

“The university and its leader have recognized that to maintain the status quo is to fall behind.”

Education Minister Mildred Dover said government is impressed by UPEI’s dynamism and by the public support made evident with the school’s fundraising success. The province has already committed $4 million to the renovations through its long-term capital support for the university.

“We have raised the bar significantly at the University of Prince Edward Island,” she said.

Roberta MacDonald, dean of the School of Business, said the new centre’s first emphasis will be on bioscience and on building the link between business and science.

She said there is an appetite for entrepreneurship on Prince Edward Island.

“Science and business were not always close partners in the past but we are moving in that direction,” she said.