YouTube Founder Helps Fund IUP Sports, Hotel ComplexIUP Breaking Ground On $60 Million FacilityIndiana University of Pennsylvania is breaking ground on a $60 million sports arena and hotel complex funded, in part, by a local family and one of the founders of YouTube.If you were driving into the town of Indiana a few years ago, you might have passed a scrap yard. Now, a big part of that yard has been cleared, where the new sports complex will sit.Owner Joseph Kovalchick said he wanted to help create something his grandson would enjoy for decades.His family donated the land and $2 million for the Kovalchick Convention and Athletic Complex."Although it's beautiful to me piles of rail and steel scrap is not aesthetically pleasing. Ao it was the moral thing to do. And it was a way to memorialize my parents' efforts for having a company that was 80 years old," Kovalchick said.Along with a hotel, the complex will also boast a 5,000 seat arena named in honor of Ed Fry, the track coach who convinced YouTube founder Chad Hurley to attend IUP.Hurley said his life was so touched by his former coach that he decided to donate $1 million to the project."I wanted to run. I wanted to concentrate on some art. That's what I was interested in. IUP let me combine both of those worlds," Hurley said."I always was proud of him because he tried as hard as he could when he was here. And he told me he doesn't remember this, but before he left, he said, 'You'll see, I'm going to do something. I guess he did," Fry said.Hurley and his partner sold their video sharing website to Google for $1.76 billion.The project is expected to open in 2011.Visit WTAE's YouTube Channel at youtube.com/wtaetv
Previous Stories:
Related Links:
Copyright 2009 by ThePittsburghChannel. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report. |
| ||||||||
     |
| |||||||
