Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Donor honored
Nova names arena for car dealer Rick Case.
Longtime Broward County auto dealer Rick Case considers Nova Southeastern University a “best kept secret not only in the country, but in South Florida.”
And he aims to help change that by funding an endowment for scholarships for undergraduates, and by lending the university his brand name to help attract more area residents to events at the university’s main campus in Davie.
In a presentation Thursday morning, the university rechristened its multipurpose arena as Rick Case Arena. The 300,000-square-foot building, which can seat up to 4,570, is home to Nova’s men’s and women’s basketball teams. It also has hosted concerts, lectures, corporate banquets, charity events, private parties, graduation ceremonies for local public and private high schools, and even the Moscow State Circus.
Neither Case nor the university would reveal the size of the endowment or the number of scholarships it will fund. Jennifer O’Flannery Anderson, the university’s vice president for advancement and community relations, said Case and his wife, Rita, committed a lump sum, and the scholarships will be funded by investment income generated by that lump sum.
University President George Hanbury said NSU wants to increase the number of undergraduates. Roughly 20 percent, or about 4,800, of about 24,000 students are undergrads, Hanbury said, and the school wants to boost that to 6,000 over the next few years.
Scholarships funded by Case’s endowment will help make that happen, Hanbury said after the naming ceremony. “We have dual admission. If you want to be a lawyer, you can spend your first three years as an undergraduate and your fourth year at law school,” he said.
Through 16 colleges, NSU offers undergraduate, graduate and professional degrees in business, dental medicine, education, engineering and computing, arts, humanities and social sciences, law, medicine, nursing, optometry, pharmacy, psychology, and natural sciences and oceanography, according to the NSU website.
In February, the university announced a goal of raising a half-billion dollars by 2020, including $250 million from philanthropic gifts and $300 million from sponsored research.
Founded in 1964 with 17 students in a single building on East Las Olas Boulevard in Fort Lauderdale, the university now occupies a 319-acre main campus in Davie, three other South Florida campuses and regional campuses in six Florida cities and San Juan, Puerto Rico.
The Rick Case Automotive Group operates 20 dealerships in Florida, Georgia and Ohio, including eight in Davie, two in Fort Lauderdale and one in Sunrise, selling import brands including Honda, Hyundai, Volkswagen, Mazda, Acura, Fiat, Kia and others.
Case said he joined NSU’s board of trustees in 2002 at the request of Fort Lauderdale businessman H. Wayne Huizenga because “you don’t say no to Wayne.”
During the time the two men served together, the board oversaw more than $100 million in new construction totaling more than a million square feet, Case said, adding he considered joining the university’s board “the best thing I’ve done in my career.”