UNLV eyes new music building

     Review-Journal
      Five-year-old plans for a new music building and pop culture center at UNLV are being dusted off by university officials.
      The project has been in limbo since the UNLV Foundation in 1992 announced a $6 million donation by the family of late developer and aeronautical engineer Tom Beam. That donation was combined with a $2 million gift from the Beam family in 1991 for plans to build an $8 million, 70,000-square-foot building just north of the Judy Bayley Theater at Maryland Parkway and Cottage Grove Avenue.
      UNLV President Carol Harter will ask the Board of Regents this week to accept a $4 million dollar gift from an anonymous donor for the music building. Regents meet today and Friday in Carson City.
      Harter said Wednesday she could "neither confirm nor deny" whether the $4 million gift has ties to earlier donations by the Beam family.
      "I'm afraid I can't comment on the identity of the donor," Harter said.
      Mystery aside, Harter said the good news is the long-awaited music building is closer to reality at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. "It will be a wonderful addition to the campus," Harter said.
      Included in the building will be a promised music library to house a long-running project, the Arnold Shaw Research Center for Popular Music.
      As imagined by its founders, the research center will offer unique resources to students of music and pop culture interested in everything from the big band era to rap. Visitors would be able to trace an artist's career through one of the largest record collections in the country. More than 100 artists have submitted taped interviews for the center's archives.