UC Irvine receives $21-million donation
A former Orange County real estate developer has donated $21 million to UC Irvine, making it the largest single cash gift in campus history.
The posthumous donation by M.A. Douglas, who died last June, was directed to the school’s new hospital, which was dedicated in January. It will be renamed UC Irvine Douglas Hospital.
“We’re just enormously thrilled to receive a gift of this magnitude,” said Thomas Mitchell, UCI’s vice chancellor of university advancement. “It’s absolutely incredible during good times, but to have a gift of this nature during very difficult times . . . is just nothing short of extraordinary.”
UCI had reached $32 million of its $50-million fundraising goal for the new 424-bed hospital before Douglas’ gift.
Douglas, 97, the son of migrant laborers, spent 33 years working for B.F. Goodrich. But he later founded IPS, a real estate company that developed, built and managed more than 10,000 apartment units, mostly in Orange County, according to Douglas’ friend and partner Michael Hayde, who also serves as the estate trustee. Douglas’ office was just blocks from UCI Medical Center in Orange.
“He drove past it every day as he was going to work and he saw firsthand the number of people . . . having access to really quality healthcare,” Mitchell said.
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