Dear Colleagues and Students,
Last year, DePaul's Vision 2018 strategic plan articulated our many goals for the next six years. One goal — bringing men's basketball back to Chicago — created a flurry of speculation about possible sites for a new DePaul basketball arena. Indeed, we received and reviewed about a dozen different proposals. We weighed the advantages and disadvantages of each. Ultimately, we agreed to pursue a public-private partnership that would offer the most cost-efficient and accessible venue for DePaul basketball.
Today, I am thrilled to tell you that Mayor Rahm Emanuel has just announced the city's plans for a large-scale tourism and economic development project near McCormick Place — one that will include a new, 10,000-seat events and convention facility, that also will serve as a DePaul arena for both our men's and women's programs.
Home to both the men's and women's teams, the new facility will bring together the large and diverse community of DePaul students, alumni and fans from the city and suburbs. In addition to hosting home games for DePaul basketball teams and serving as a practice facility, the events center will support other high-profile functions for both DePaul and the Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority (MPEA) — including DePaul commencement ceremonies, special events and Chicago's convention-related business. The facility will serve as an important venue for many Chicago-area public and private schools and other colleges as well, including Chicago Public Schools sporting events, graduations, City Colleges events, and the like.
DePaul is now one of several strong partners who are part of the mayor's plan to make Chicago more attractive to tourists and convention planners. Other facilities being planned as part of the city's collective package of strategic investments in tourism and economic development in the South Loop include:
- Street-level restaurants and shops at the base of the arena, along Prairie and Indiana Avenues;
- A 400-room hotel on the same block, along Cermak Road;
- A second hotel development on the south side of Cermak Road between Indiana and Michigan Avenue;
- An elevated pedestrian walkway from the McCormick Place parking garage to the arena facility; and
- A related $166 million investment in the renovation of Navy Pier and the Children's Museum.
DePaul's investment in this partnership with the city will amount to $70 million. We believe we can complete this project without affecting tuition. Funding will come from ticket sales, naming rights for the arena, revenues generated by DePaul athletics and the Big East Conference, and fundraising. Happily, several gifts have been committed, and we look forward to announcing them in the near future.
DePaul makes this investment for several reasons. College basketball presents high-impact opportunities to promote our reputation. Alumni find the broadened name recognition a help when competing for jobs nationally. This first-class facility and its more central location will help us build on the momentum our basketball program has enjoyed in recent years from hiring first-rate coaches and staff. And, most immediately, this partnership provides a rare opportunity to do so at a reasonable cost while helping the city to achieve its goals of rejuvenating Motor Row — an area it has long wanted to revive — and while helping the MPEA attract a broader array of conventions to the city.
We do this with nothing but gratitude for the Allstate Arena in Rosemont and for the city leaders who have been so supportive for so many years. It has been a wonderful relationship. Given that construction on the new facility is not expected to start until 2014, we likely will ask to extend our contract. Our hope is to play the 2016-17 season in our new arena.
Today's announcement adds to what has been an exciting time for the university. Just this past week, DePaul completed construction of our new soundstage at Cinespace Studios in Chicago, to dramatically increase the learning opportunities for our film students. In July, DePaul will open major new buildings for our College of Education and The Theatre School. We will transform our library into a Learning Commons this summer. We are redesigning space for our departments of writing and modern language, and nearing completion of the architectural documents for a new building for the School of Music. All of this follows numerous facilities improvements over the past six years, new partnerships over the past several years with Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science, Chicago History Museum, Catholic Theological Union, Facing History and Ourselves, Gordon Tech College Prep and Lake View High School, as well as the addition of 55 new majors and academic programs in the past six years alone.
This reinvention of DePaul has been accomplished through the vision and hard work of our faculty and staff and the assistance of all those who have worked on the Many Dreams, One Mission Campaign, which has generated $283 million in funds to date for student scholarships, academic programs and faculty support. This truly is an inspired community that cares deeply for the future strength of our university.
Thank you for making this exciting next step in our history possible. Without your unwavering dedication and hard work, DePaul would not be what it is — the kind of institution that makes us an attractive partner for ambitious projects like these.
God bless you,
Rev. Dennis H. Holtschneider, C.M.
President
For additional information about the arena, please check the following website http://alumni.depaul.edu/arena
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