Harvard Business School To Launch Two Major Construction Projects in Allston

Harvard Business School announced Thursday that it will embark on two major construction projects in Allston: a new executive education building on the school's campus and a Harvard Innovation Lab in a University-owned property on Western Ave.

The executive education building will cost somewhere between $90 to $100 million, according to HBS Dean Nitin Nohria. The building will be constructed with the help of a $50 million gift from Tata Trusts and Companies, philanthropic entities of India’s Tata Group, a conglomerate with a combined market capitalization of $80 billion.

The gift is the largest from an international donor in the history of the Business School.

The executive education building, which will be named Tata Hall, will be used for a combination of academic and residential purposes. Construction will hopefully begin next spring and open for use in the fall of 2013, according to Nohria.

Ratan Tata, the Chairman of Tata Sons Ltd., attended HBS School of Advanced Management Program, an executive education program, in 1975.

In addition to the new executive education building, HBS announced that it will renovate the old WGBH building on Western Ave. to open a lab for innovation and entrepreneurship. Nohria said he hopes that the lab will encourage innovation ventures across the University.

The price tag on the renovation is somewhere between $15 to $20 million, and the project will ideally begin in the spring, according to Nohria. But he noted that the timeline is an “aggressive” goal, and that it was subject to approval by the City of Boston.

—Staff writer Sofia E. Groopman can be reached at segroopm@fas.harvard.edu.

—Check TheCrimson.com for more updates.