Saint Louis School received nearly half the money it needs to build a technology, art and business center with a $5.2 million check from the Clarence T.C. Ching Foundation yesterday.

The private Catholic school for boys wants to break ground on the three-story building next summer and have it ready by fall 2011. In addition to the foundation's gift, the school needs to raise $6 million on top of $1 million it has collected so far to cover the center's $12 million estimated cost, said President Walter Kirimitsu.

The 27,000-square-foot building, to be named the Clarence T.C. Ching Learning and Technology Center, will house a television production studio and a Hawaiian-studies program to teach students about language, music, hula, arts, history and culture. It also will have business, music and arts classes and an adult education and community outreach program.

The center will sit next to the school's Richard T. Mamiya Theatre, built 25 years ago and the last project at the Waialae Avenue campus.

“;This is historic,”; Kirimitsu said after a ceremony attended by alumni, including Lt. Gov. James “;Duke”; Aiona, a 1973 graduate.

School officials hope the tech center will attract more boys to a campus that has lost about 10 percent of its students in each of the last three years. Saint Louis, which enrolls 720 children from grades 4 through 12, has a capacity of 1,000 students.

“;I think this will spark an interest in prospective students and parents,”; Kirimitsu said. “;It will be a huge selling point.”;

The school will use $200,000 from the $5.2 million donation for scholarships.

The gift was the latest educational contribution by the Clarence T.C. Ching Foundation, named for a real estate developer and philanthropist who graduated from Saint Louis in 1932. Ching died in 1985.

“;It is giving back to his alma mater, which helped to formulate and to mold him into being that compassionate humanitarian he was,”; said Ching's nephew Raymond Tam, a 1951 Saint Louis graduate.

Established in 1967, the Ching foundation received a boost of $130 million with last year's sale of Kukui Gardens, the 857-unit rental complex on Liliha Street. Since then it has donated $3 million for a new gym at Maryknoll School and $5 million to refurbish the University of Hawaii's Cooke Field.