Pace University has created a new standalone college for the performing arts in recognition of a $25 million gift — one of the largest the university has ever received — from Pamela and Rob Sands, J.D. ’84. This will be the seventh school and college within the university and it will begin its programming this coming academic year.

Called the Sands College of Performing Arts, the facility will be part of One Pace Plaza, the main building just across from City Hall Park. The university is in the process of transforming that building to include three new venues: a 450-seat proscenium theater, a 200-seat flexible theater, and a 99-seat black box theater, along with scene and costume shops, dressing rooms, rehearsal rooms, green rooms, and dance studios. The college already has performing arts undergraduate and graduate degrees in acting, directing, musical theater, commercial dance, production and design for stage and screen, and stage management.

The One Pace Plaza renovation will also provide new academic spaces, common spaces, and a modernized residence hall, but more on that later…

The Sands donation is part of a larger campaign for the transformation of Pace’s lower Manhattan campus that includes private donors, significant investments from Pace, and $30 million in support from New York State and the federal government. Construction will start this fall, at the same time the university expects to complete its new building — the tower at 15 Beekman, below.