Bill Ackman purchases Manhattan property to launch a $260 million brain research institute
Billionaire Bill Ackman bought two adjacent Manhattan buildings for a combined $260 million to create the Ackman Oxman Institute, a large-scale brain research center.
Bill Ackman’s Pershing Square Foundation completed the purchase of a 400,000-square-foot property at 125 West End Avenue for $190 million and secured an adjacent building at 320 West 66th Street for $70 million, creating a potential campus of almost 700,000 sq ft. The complex will be transformed into the Ackman Oxman Institute, honoring Ackman and his wife Neri Oxman, and will bring together scientists to study the brain across disciplines such as genetics, nutrition, longevity and neurosurgery.
The project was motivated by the 26-year-old daughter Lucy’s survival after a severe brain hemorrhage and the experimental therapies she received. Ackman plans to fund the institute through Pershing Square Philanthropies, which has already granted over a billion dollars, and through an ecosystem of related startups. A board that includes Nobel laureate Jim Rothman and Stanford neuroscientist Andrew Huberman is being assembled, and a CEO will be hired soon. The institute, partnered with Mount Sinai Hospital, aims to start operations in the main building by year-end.