Harvard Alumnus Gives Gift for New Conference Center

Harvard Business School announced that Seth Klarman, M.B.A. ’82 and Beth Klarman have made the naming gift for Klarman Hall, a major new conference center, auditorium and performance space that will replace the existing Burden Hall. The new facility had been incorporated into the HBS elements of Harvard’s recent institutional master plan filings for Allston development. The project description, according to Harvard’s draft environmental impact report associated with the master plan filing outlines 140,000 square feet of new construction, to be built in two phases.

The first phase will consist of building a 110,000-square-foot, three-story complex just south of Burden with seating for approximately 1000. It will connect to the Spangler Center, the center of MBA student life and to academic buildings at the concourse level. The second phase will be building a 30,000-square-foot, two-story, below-grade facility for meeting and classroom space.

Seth Klarman is president and CEO of The Baupost Group, a value-oriented investment-management firm founded in 1982. The gift from the Klarmans was secured during the HBS $1 billion capital campaign.

In a statement in HBS’s news release, Seth Klarman said, “When you bring people with talent, vision, and ambition together in a space designed specifically to facilitate connections, conversation, and debate, the potential for transformative ideas and action is limitless. Beth and I believe game-changing innovations will emerge from this space. HBS has played an important and ongoing role in my life and it’s a privilege to able to give back to a school that has given us so much.”

regions: Boston

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