The university held a groundbreaking ceremony on Saturday for the Marion H. Rochelle Gateway Center. The center is intended to house an alumni center, meeting rooms, a multipurpose space, career services for graduates and a museum highlighting energy in Wyoming.
Prior to the homecoming game Saturday, a crowd gathered to watch the groundbreaking ceremony for the Marion H. Rochelle Gateway Center.
Speakers at the event included UW Foundation President Ben Blalock, UW President Tom Buchanan and UW Board of Trustees President Dave Bostrom.
In addition to the $10 million donated by Marian H. Rochelle, Mick and Susie McMurry recently donated $6 million in support of the building.
“The center’s museum will be named the McMurry Family UW Legacy Hall. The McMurry Family Grand Atrium will be a soaring, three-story space in the center from the south entry that will house a permanent flexion exhibiting and defining the story of Wyoming,” Blalock said.
Along with these major donors, more than a dozen others, including John and Esther Clay, Jack and Patricia Guthrie, Clayton and Kandy Hartman, and April Brimmer Kunz, donated in support of the Gateway Center. So far, $19 million has been raised for the almost $30 million project.
The building itself will be 60,000 square feet and will stand three-stories tall. It will contain career services for graduates, an alumni center, meeting rooms, multi-purpose space, and a museum highlighting energy in Wyoming.
“This Gateway Center will bring together all the aspects of the University. It will be the prospective student’s starting home, it brings together ASUW who will have meetings in this building, and it brings together the hundreds of thousands of alumni. It gives a place for us to be proud to introduce everybody to the University of Wyoming,” Bostrom said.
After a series of speeches, the major contributors and crowd moved to watch the unveiling of a sign showing all that will be built during the next two years.
Marian H. Rochelle and the McMurrys, who were present at the ceremony, were gifted with two personally engraved golden shovels.
“This building is really very important to us that it celebrates the role of what private giving does for the University of Wyoming,” Blalock said.
Construction is scheduled to start for the spring of 2013 and the facility’s grand opening will take place in the fall of 2014.
