The University at Buffalo School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences held a ceremonial groundbreaking today for the building it will call home in 2012, when pharmacy will become the first UB professional school in three decades to move onto the South (Main Street) Campus and back into the City of Buffalo.

The move is a return to the City of Buffalo, where the pharmacy school--the university's second oldest entity, next to medicine--was founded more than 120 years ago.  Since 1977, the pharmacy school has resided in Cooke and Hochstetter halls on UB's North Campus.

"As the first school to return to Buffalo since construction of the North Campus in the 1970s, the pharmacy school will serve as UB's newest ambassador to the city," Simpson said. "The school will be a signal element in the positive evolution of the South Campus and its surrounding community, as UB itself transforms, through UB 2020, into a premier institution of public higher education.  I am confident the pharmacy school will forge many highly valued partnerships with our neighbors in University Heights as it continues to prepare future generations of pharmacists, clinicians and pharmaceutical scientists."

Kapoor Hall will be the first facility designed specifically for the needs and anticipated growth of UB Pharmacy, which is ranked in the top 25 pharmacy schools in the nation, according to U.S. News and World Report.

Named in honor of alumnus John N. Kapoor, who as a college graduate in India received a scholarship from UB that allowed him to complete a Ph.D. in 1972. A highly successful entrepreneur in the pharmaceutical industry, Kapoor has never forgotten UB's generosity. Through the John and Editha Kapoor Charitable Foundation, he has given more than $10.8 million to UB Pharmacy, inspiring several other major donations in support of the new state-of-the-art facility that will bear his name.

The building is the third major construction project begun this year at the university, which broke ground in April on a new North (Amherst) Campus engineering school building and in August on a 10-story facility to house Kaleida Health's Global Vascular Institute, UB's Clinical and Translational Research Center and UB's Biosciences Incubator on the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus.  The three projects are significant milestones in the UB 2020 strategic plan to grow the university and increase its annual local economic impact from $1.7 billion to $3.6 billion.

A major component of UB 2020 is the development and implementation of a comprehensive physical plan to dramatically expand and improve the character and facilities of UB's North, South and Downtown campuses.

Designed by architects S/L/A/M Collaborative, which completed projects for the University of Notre Dame and Emory University, the building's construction is making optimal use of public and private funds. New York State has provided $46 million for the $62 million construction project, with the rest coming from UB and private donors--to create a contemporary, highly functional and ecologically friendly teaching and research facility.