Amini gives charity $6M
By Thomas Russell -- Furniture Today, June 5, 2006
Duarte, Calif. — AICO Chairman and CEO Michael Amini has donated $6 million toward the City of Hope Cancer Center's proposed Transfusion Medicine Center.
The 60,000-square-foot building will be on the cancer research and treatment center's campus in Duarte, Calif. When completed in 2008, it will house the City of Hope's blood collection and processing services, an important component of the its patent care programs.
The donation is the building's largest to date, which led facility's name: the Michael Amini Transfusion Medicine Center.
Amini downplayed his role in the project, which could cost about $20 million.
"They needed to build that building and were needing some funds," he said. "They approached me, and I felt it was a good opportunity to participate. ... It's not a lot of money based on what they do there."
Still, the City of Hope is close to Amini's heart and a cause his company has supported for several years.
"We all, one day — if not ourselves but our loved ones — will be in need of treatment," he said. "Cancer is a disease that comes and knocks on everyone's door sooner or later. Sometimes I feel a lot of us put our heads under the sand and pretend we don't want to hear about it."
City of Hope President and CEO Michael Friedman called Amini's donation a "transformational gift for us. We could not be more excited about this."
"I think it is a personal expression of his enormous caring for other people," Friedman added.
The building will have facilities to test and produce blood products and to enhance the center's production of stem cells. The center's National Marrow Donor Program also will be based in the building.
Lab space in the facility will be available for research needs and work with islet cells, related to curing people with Type I diabetes.
A groundbreaking is planned for early next year and construction will take 12 to 18 months, Friedman said.
