Almost one-third of the total estimated cost of Syracuse University’s $62.5 million National Veterans Resource Complex project will be covered by a single donation.

SU alumnus Daniel D’Aniello and his wife, Gayle, have donated $20 million to the complex, the university announced Monday morning. D’Aniello is a life trustee of the university. He graduated from the Martin J. Whitman School of Management in 1968.

The gift is one of the single largest donations in university history.

“(SU) is deeply grateful for the D’Aniello family’s support, which has the potential to change the lives of millions of veterans and military families,” said Chancellor Kent Syverud in a press release Monday.

The NVRC aims to centralize a number of veterans services in one building at the intersection of South Crouse and Waverly avenues, the former site of SU’s Hoople Building.

The Institute for Veterans and Military Families will be housed in the NVRC. The IVMF is a nationally recognized program that focuses on veterans research and job placement, among other things.

D’Aniello is a billionaire businessman who, in early October of last year, donated $500,000 to SU for “Giving Day,” a 24-hour push to increase donations to the university.

He’s also a co-chair of the IVMF advisory board and a co-founder and chairman emeritus of the Carlyle Group, a multinational alternative asset management firm. The Carlyle Group owns a stake in the company that produces popular “Beats by Dre” headphones.

The Carlyle Group has $174 billion assets, according to its website. The company’s investors “range from public and private pension funds to wealthy individuals and families to sovereign wealth funds, unions and corporations,” according to its website.

Construction recently started on SU’s $62.5 million project. Excavators are currently digging up a section of the NVRC site. University officials, last fall, said they expect the project to be finished by spring 2020.

Emma Comtois | Digital Editor

Originally, though, officials said the NVRC would be open in the spring or summer of 2019.

Mike Haynie, the university’s vice chancellor for strategic initiatives and innovation, at a public forum last September said the project’s construction was pushed back because NVRC fundraising efforts took longer than expected.

SU had to meet fundraising benchmarks before taking the project to Board of Trustees members for approval, Haynie said. The vice chancellor, at the time, did not detail what those benchmarks were.

A state funding award that was part of New York state Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s Upstate Revitalization Initiative was expected to cover about $12.5 million in project costs. That funding award was announced in late 2015.

Syverud, at the time, was co-chair of the Central New York Regional Economic Development Council.

The council submitted the area’s application for Upstate Revitalization Initiative funds. The chancellor stepped down from that role in August 2016.

Officials expect the NVRC to generate $300 million in “regional economic activity.” The NVRC will bring an additional 5,000 annual “hotel nights” to central New York, according to the university, generating $2.5 million in additional local room occupancy and sales tax each year.

The university anticipates the building to produce $22 million in “outside financial influx” from travel and tourism, Haynie added last fall.

“To say this center is a game changer in the ongoing efforts to better the post-service lives of our veterans and their families is an understatement,” D’Aniello said in the press release Monday morning.

Published on February 5, 2018 at 11:02 am

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