Gifts Roundup: Daytona Beach Park Raises $15 Million; U. of Houston Gets $3 Million

A roundup of notable gifts compiled by The Chronicle:

Brown Riverfront Park Foundation

Cici and Hyatt Brown have pledged $15 million to the City of Daytona Beach, Fla., to renovate Riverfront Park.

The city-owned park has fallen into disrepair over the past few decades, and the Browns have offered the gift to plant trees and flowers, build a splash park, and improve a running trail and park lights to enhance safety for park users.

If the city commission approves it, the gift will create a foundation to lease the park from the city and oversee park operations and maintenance.

Hyatt Brown retired as CEO of his insurance agency, Brown & Brown, in 2009.

Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology

The university in Terre Haute, Ind., has received $15 million from an anonymous donor to pay half the costs of constructing a new academic building.

The building, which is expected to open in 2021, will house collaboration workspaces, design studios, flexible classrooms, chemistry laboratories, and space for faculty innovation.

Barton Health

Lisa Maloff has donated $10 million to create a center for orthopedic health and wellness at the medical center in South Lake Tahoe, Calif. The new center will provide orthopedic care as well as physical therapy, rehabilitation, and performance-enhancing therapies for athletes.

Maloff’s late husband, Robert, owned a number of hotels and casinos around Lake Tahoe and in Reno, Nev. He died in 2011.

Buck Institute for Research on Aging

Nicole Shanahan has given $6 million to establish the Center for Female Reproductive Longevity and Equality. The new institute will study ways to prolong female fertility and prevent ovaries from aging, with the goal of enabling women to have children later in life, as men can.

Shanahan is a lawyer in Palo Alto, Calif., and the founder and CEO of ClearAccessIP, which makes patent-management software.

University of Houston

An anonymous donor gave $3 million to cover the full tuition for the inaugural class of 30 students when its medical school opens in the fall of 2020.

Texas ranks 47th out of 50 states in the ratio of primary-care physicians to the state’s population. The College of Medicine hopes to mitigate that problem by aiming for at least half of its graduates to specialize in primary care.

University of Missouri at St. Louis

David Steward, the founder and chairman of World Wide Technology, and his wife, Thelma, have pledged $1.3 million over four years from their family foundation to establish an institute for jazz studies.

The Stewards have directed their gift to support scholarships, artists-in-residence, performance travel fees for jazz students, and summer jazz camp for middle and high-school students.

Hospice Foundation of Western New York

Dave and Joan Rogers gave $1 million to endow its program to care for seriously and terminally ill children.

Dave Rogers is the CEO and co-founder of Life Storage, which operates 700 storage facilities across the country and a real-estate investment trust. Joan Rogers owns a shop in Clarence, N.Y., that sells quilts and fabric.

To learn about other big donations, see our database of gifts of $1 million or more, which is updated throughout the week.