Brown U. approves construction projects

PROVIDENCE – Despite budget cutbacks and tuition increases, Brown University will proceed with a number of construction projects next year, many paid for by donors.
Late last month, the Corporation of Brown University, the school’s governing board, approved designs for a combined aquatics center and Nelson Fitness Center to be constructed at the athletics complex. The new combined center, paid for entirely with donor money, will also replace the parking lot with a landscaped quadrangle. The university expects to complete the new center by the fall of 2011.
It will name the aquatics center after Katherine Moran Coleman in recognition of a $14.75 million bequest from the estate of the late Raymond L. Moran, a 1941 Brown graduate.
The corporation also accepted a $5 million gift from university Trustee Richard A. Friedman and his wife, $4 million of which will go toward renovating the Metcalf Laboratory as a new home for the department of cognitive, linguistic and psychological sciences, and $1 million to be designated by June 30. The two are Brown graduates and Brown parents.
Elsewhere, the university will use $1 million of a $3.5 million gift from Trustee Joan Wernig Sorensen and Dr. E. Paul Sorensen to renovate the first floor of the Rockefeller Library.
And $800,000 of a $1 million gift by Catherine Willis Gildor, a Brown graduate and parent, and Ephraim F. Gildor, a Brown parent, will go toward restoring the Archives Room in the John Hay Library.