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Recent donations, including three totaling $3.5 million, have pushed the University of Missouri-Kansas City closer to its goal of raising $48 million in private funding for its planned Downtown Campus for the Arts, expected to be the future home of the university’s Conservatory of Music and Dance.
Among those was a $1.5 million donation from the David Beals Charitable Trust, the university said in a release today. Two other million-dollar gifts from anonymous donors bring the current total to $34 million, $14 million away from its goal.
“The dream of having a downtown campus for our incredible conservatory is one that I’ve long believed in,” UMKC Chancellor Leo Morton said. With the newest donations, he said, “I am more confident than ever that our dream will come true.”
David Beals was a lifelong resident of Kansas City, arts patron and held leadership roles with numerous nonprofit organizations, the release said.
The conservatory’s dean, Peter Witte, said that “a downtown campus for the conservatory places current and future students in the heart of a championship city. Their presence will catalyze Kansas City’s reputation as a 21st century arts hub.”
If UMKC can hit its $48 million goal in private donations by June 30, 2016, it can seek state matching funds for $96 million first phase of the Downtown campus. That would house the conservatory and provide state-of-the-art practice and classroom adjacent to the core of the region’s professional arts scene.
Sitting just south of the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts, campus would be Kansas City’s counterpoint to other metropolitan arts-education centers, such as Juilliard in New York or the New England Conservatory in Boston, each of which is close to a performing arts center.
The move would also infuse Downtown with 600 students and roughly 400 faculty and staff members, while clearing space on the Volker campus for other programs, the university said.
