M&T gives Canisius $500,000 challenge

By Jay Rey
News Staff Reporter
The Buffalo News
May 2, 2007

M&T Bank has awarded Canisius College a half-milliondollar grant for its proposed science center, college officials announced Tuesday.

The $500,000 challenge grant will match dollar for dollar the amount of money and pledges Canisius receives over a yearlong period.

We believe this project will advance Canisius’ already outstanding undergraduate science program, as well as help Western New York’s life sciences economy to develop,” Shelley C. Drake, president of the M&T Charitable Foundation, said in a statement.

Grants from this highly respected institution are very competitive,” the Rev. Vincent M. Cooke, Canisius president, said in a statement.

By selecting the college for this award, M&T has recognized Canisius as a leader in the Buffalo community,” he added.

The funds will be used to renovate the four-story Health- Now building, next to the campus at Main Street and Jefferson Avenue, into classrooms, offices and laboratories for the college’s science programs.

So far, the school has raised more than a third of the $47 million needed for the project, said John J. Hurley, executive vice president and vice president for college relations at Canisius.

In 2002, Canisius agreed to buy the 237,000-square-foot building — which housed a Sears store from 1920 to 1980 — to bring all its science programs under one roof and play a stronger role in the life sciences economy developing at the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus. The college expects to acquire the property later this year, after HealthNow, the parent company of BlueCross Blue- Shield of Western New York, moves to its new location.

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