BC miners donate C$ 20 million toward new UBC building

Private funding required for a new Earth Systems Science Building.

BC miners donate C$ 20 million toward new UBC building

14th January 2008

Vancouver Sun

Fourteen donors from the B.C. mining community have come up with more than $20 million toward the $32.5 million in private funding required for a new Earth Systems Science Building at the University of B.C.

Construction of the $75-million building is expected to begin next year, with completion scheduled for the fall of 2010.

Simon Peacock, dean of the UBC Faculty of Science, said everyone in the industry is being approached about helping finance the project, and he expects that the private-sector financing will be in place by the end of this year.

Current donors include Goldcorp, the Lundin Group, Pan American Silver Corp., Breakwater Resources, Silver Wheaton Corp., Selwyn Resources, Northern Peru Copper, Global Copper, Imperial Metals, Northern Dynasty Minerals, Western Copper, Silver Standard Resources, as well as Ross Beatty, and Catherine McLeod-Seltzer.

The new building will contain about 95,000 square feet of teaching and research facilities - including theatres, research labs, seminar spaces and offices.

Peacock said he is extremely grateful for the mining industry's generous contributions.

"It's relatively rare to find tremendous industry support like this for what is fundamentally an academic building," he said in an interview.