Business students currently share 50 thousand square feet with other colleges, and have 30 thousand square feet of dedicated space for themselves. The Matthewson University Gateway project will accommodate business students with 125 thousand square feet of dedicated space, needed for one of the fastest growing majors at the University of Nevada, Reno.
“Business is literally bursting at the seams,” Vic Redding, Vice President of Administration and Finance for the University of Nevada, Reno said.
The Ansari Business Building will remain at the university, although it is uncertain how it will be occupied in the future.
The newly renamed University Way will hold the two new business buildings that will be open to the public in the fall of 2025.
Ramisha Ibrahim is a student at the University of Nevada, Reno studying business that is happy about the upcoming business buildings. She also feels that the current business building occupies a large variety of different majors, lacks modern elements that many new buildings on campus feature and no longer fits the needs of business majors in general.
“I am excited for the new business building. I think it is about time we get a new one,” said Ibrahim. “I feel like we need a new modern building. I can not wait for the new building, how big it is going to be and how it is going to be mainly focused on business.”
The area the business building will be on will hold two buildings one of them will be a hotel with a conference center and the other will occupy modern classrooms, a trading laboratory to simulate a trading room similar to Wall Street, auditoriums and offices. There will also be a 375-seat auditorium that will also benefit business students as well as the community for events.
The buildings will not be connected although they will be situated next to each other on the same parcel of land that is currently only being held by Jimmy Johns.
“One thing that Reno is missing is high quality non-gaming conference space,” Redding said. “Most universities of our caliber do have an on campus hotel.”
Redding mentioned that the university will not be running the hotel and conference center as it will be run by an undecided company such as Hilton or Marriott. Although the revenue generated by the building will off-set the cost of the project.
The hotel will be open to the public and people affiliated with the university. Guest speakers, candidates, visiting professors and conferences will all make up some of the demographic of guests staying at the hotel. The hotel will occupy about 150 rooms.
“The Matthewson University Gateway is really going to tie the university with Reno,” Redding said.
Redding said that Reno has been doing a lot of work to clean up different areas north of the university. He believes that with the university growing south, expanding from its current location the new business buildings will be the gateway linking Reno as it is evolving.
Madison Wanco can be reached via email at mwanco@sagebrush.unr.edu or via Twitter @NevadaSagebrush.
