Marquette University will host a groundbreaking ceremony on May 22 to celebrate the start of construction for a new Law School building. It is targeted for completion by fall 2010.
The 200,000-square-foot, four-story building will be constructed on a vacant site northwest of North 11th Street and Clybourn Avenue. The building will include two courtrooms, classrooms, faculty office suites, library space with a two-story reading room, a conference center and a café. Two levels of underground parking, with 170 spaces, will be located beneath the building.
"We recognize the importance the Law School has always had in educating lawyers of the highest skill and ethical caliber," said Rev. Robert A. Wild, S.J., president of Marquette University. "This new building will allow our first-rate faculty to deliver the very best in legal education to a new generation."
The building will be named Eckstein Hall, in honor of a $51 million donations from Raymond A. and Katherine A. Eckstein, Marquette alumni who live in Cassville.
Inside the building will be the Zilber Forum, named for Zilber Ltd. founder Joseph Zilber, a Marquette alumnus who donated $30 million last year to the university, including $5 million toward the construction of Eckstein Hall. The Eckstein Hall project, estimated to cost $85 million in total, has also received a $1 million gift from the Bradley Foundation and several "seven-figure gifts" from anonymous donors. There is $19 million left to be raised for the project.
The building was designed by Boston-based Shepley, Bulfinch, Richardson & Abbott Architects and Minnetonka, Minn.-based Opus Architects & Engineers. Minnetonka, Minn.-based Opus North Corp. will be the general contractor for the construction project.
The groundbreaking ceremony on May 22 will begin at 1:15 p.m. Speakers at the ceremony will include Wisconsin Supreme Court Chief Justice Shirley S. Abrahamson; Judge Frank H. Easterbrook, chief judge of the U.S. Appeals Court for the Seventh Circuit; and Natalie A. Black, senior vice president, general counsel, and corporate secretary for the Kohler Co. and a member of the Marquette Board of Trustees.
