FIU gets $10 million for academic center that will honor the Cuban community
Florida International University officials moved a step closer to opening their long-awaited CasaCuba on Thursday, as they accepted a $10-million donation from Benjamín León Jr., chairman and founder of Leon Medical Centers.
“Benjamín’s gift to CasaCuba will provide the power to fuel dreams that resonate beyond the walls of academia, transcending borders and resonating globally,” said FIU President Kenneth Jessell during an FIU Board of Trustees meeting Thursday.
Once built, CasaCuba will serve as an academic and cultural center dedicated to Cuba. FIU hopes it will hold events, show exhibitions and foster relationships.
In exchange for his gift, FIU trustees unanimously voted to name the CasaCuba facility, which will be located on Southwest 107th Avenue and 16th Street at the entrance of FIU’s main campus, the “Benjamín León Jr. Building.”
“I’m very happy. I feel very grateful to God for the opportunity to be a part of the creation of one of the most important projects for Cubans,” said León, a Cuban exile himself who remembers arriving in Miami at 7:25 p.m. on Jan. 12, 1961, through KLM Airlines when he was 16. In Miami, the León Family built an empire in the health care field servicing fellow exiles.
FROM 2021: Jorge Mas will donate $5 million to FIU for CasaCuba
León said he contributed to CasaCuba because he wants future generations to learn about his native country, what the Cuban diaspora was like and what it accomplished in Miami and beyond.
His donation this week reignited an FIU dream that has been in the works since 2015, but dormant for a few years.
Mark Rosenberg, FIU’s former president who resigned in 2022 amid sexual misconduct allegations, first planned CasaCuba as a 57,000-square-foot facility that would cost about $34 million and open in about 2023.
Fast forward nearly a decade, the building plan has now downsized to 43,000 square feet, its cost has risen to about $40 million and its opening date has moved back to about 2027.
What happened? COVID.
How the pandemic changed CasaCuba
Lili Betancourt Space, ✓executive director of CasaCuba, said the fundraising campaign for CasaCuba, which will be funded with philanthropic gifts and government-funded grants, launched on March 4, 2020, shortly before the COVID pandemic ensued.
Soon after, most donations shifted toward the ill and those financially affected by COVID, hindering the fundraising.
For a while, too, people wondered if they’d need physical spaces again, or if they’d carry on solely online. But “the world eventually realized it still needs spaces for our emotional and physical health,” Betancourt Space said.
“The timing couldn’t have been worse,” she added. “But instead of putting it on the floor of a library and moving on, we were willing to make more time and do it the right way.”
FROM 2019: Cuban heritage center at FIU to receive $750,000 from National Endowment for Humanities
Still, the pandemic years changed a lot. CasaCuba got Betancourt Space as its new director, and Mario Murgado as its new board chair. FIU got Jessell as its new president. Construction costs increased. And FIU changed the architect from René González Architects to HKS Architects.
What didn’t change: The desire to pay tribute to the Cubans and their nation.
CasaCuba will house the FIU Cuban Research Institute and include classrooms, galleries and offices. As of Thursday, FIU officials had raised about $26 million of the $40 million needed for the building.
Betancourt Space hopes Thornton Construction Company and the architects will break ground next spring. Anyone who donates at least $500 before groundbreaking will be recognized as a founding donor.
“We’re feeling really optimistic. These kind of projects are challenging, but they’re worthy,” Betancourt Space said. “CasaCuba has had its ups and downs, but much like the community CasaCuba hopes to honor, the project itself has been resilient and has persevered.”
