After two years of inquiries by Boston businessman David Mugar and a week of intensified wrangling between lawyers for Mugar and Boston University, the university returned to him a $3 million donation in mid-December.
The money will be passed on to Cape Cod Hospital and WGBH-TV (Ch. 2), according to Mugar spokesman George Regan. It was originally promised in 1988 for expansions to the Mugar Memorial Library, though the project never came to fruition.
Mugar threatened to sue BU in early December if the university refused to return the money. Chancellor John Silber decided to settle with Mugar shortly before a 5 p.m. deadline on Dec. 17 set by Mugar’s lawyers.
Mugar said he was glad the university decided to return the money.
‘Nobody in a sane state wants a court case,’ Mugar said in a December phone interview. ‘I didn’t want to have to go to court with BU it’s an institution that our family has been close to for 40 years. This is nothing personal.
‘I know Dr. Silber and the trustees want to try to do the right thing,’ Mugar said later.
Silber was equally grateful the matter was resolved.
‘We look forward to continuing the university’s long-term relationship with Mr. Mugar and his family, and to working with him on future endeavors,’ Silber said in a joint press release.
Mugar first asked the university about the money in 1998, after seeing no progress on the library project, he said. His inquiries received no responses until a 2000 letter from then BU president Jon Westling.
In the letter, Westling admitted that the library expansion project had ‘lost momentum’ and had ‘in effect, been on hold’ since 1993, according to documents obtained by The Daily Free Press.
Silber and BU lawyers had more recently offered to name another BU building after Mugar, in addition to the library, suggesting National Public Radio station WBUR’s studios at one point. Mugar rejected those offers.
‘I don’t have that type of ego,’ Mugar said. ‘Everything I’ve always given has been in memory of my parents.’
Each side’s lawyers exchanged letters disputing details of the case between Dec. 11 and the Dec. 17 deadline, including when BU actually realized the value of Mugar’s donation and how much the library expansion would have cost.
Mugar said the nature of libraries has changed since he originally promised BU the money. Since 1988, libraries have become much more reliant on the internet and extra space has become much less necessary, he said.
This is an account occasionally used by the Daily Free Press editors to post archived posts from previous iterations of the site or otherwise for special circumstance publications. See authorship info on the byline at the top of the page.
