Barcelona-based IESE Business School will invest €24 million in a new campus building in Madrid as part of an overall expansion, its dean announced recently. The new building, which will be focused on entrepreneurship, research, and international programs, will expand research and teaching opportunities in Madrid by 50 percent. Construction is slated to begin in 2018.
“IESE aspires to have one of the most influential training centers in the world,” Dean Franz Heukamp said in an address to IESE global alumni gathered for a reunion last month. “The enlargement of our campus will help us support and stimulate the growth of the business community in Madrid.”
The €24-million euro investment is part of IESE’s overall expansion project, which began in 2015 with a new campus in Munich, continued with the expansion of the school’s South Campus last year in Barcelona, and will conclude with this latest project. The Madrid expansion will add 16,300 square meters to the campus in that city, doubling the current space of IESE in Madrid and tripling the current land space, which will also provide for potential additional future expansion. The new building will include a parking lot with more than 300 spaces, four new classrooms, a multi-purpose tech classroom, and a 500-person auditorium.
IESE hopes the expanded campus will better serve the 15,000 alumni who reside in Madrid. It will also offer new international programs for managers and companies with a special emphasis on improving IESE’s entrepreneurial activity and research in the city.
The school has launched a fundraising campaign to finance the project and hopes to raise 70 percent of its cost from former students and partner companies. The remaining 30 percent of funding will come from IESE’s regular budget. The €24-million projected cost includes everything from land purchase and construction to furniture, facilities, and taxes.
IESE began teaching programs in Madrid in 1974 at the request of alumni who lived in the area. The current campus opened in September 1991.
