Thanks to a $3 million gift, Roger Rieger will be remembered at Kansas University for a scholarship hall — and not as a bad cook.

Rieger and his wife, Annette, have pledged $3 million for KU to construct a new scholarship hall in the 1300 block of Ohio Street, officials announced Tuesday.

Rieger lived at Battenfeld Scholarship Hall while he attended KU in the 1960s. When student cooks ruined dinner, they were stuffed in the back of a modified hearse, driven to Potter Lake and thrown in the water.

“If the meal was totally inedible, that was the penalty,” he said. “I had that happen to me three times.”

The Riegers, who live in Seattle, are naming the hall for Roger’s brother Dennis Rieger, who died of diabetes at age 47.

Plans call for a three-section hall that will house 50 women. Final designs are being completed, with a groundbreaking tentatively set for this fall. The hall will open in fall 2005.

Representatives from the surrounding neighborhood have resisted the construction since KU proposed knocking down four houses and two apartment buildings they said added to the historical value of the area. The houses were demolished in October.

KU appointed a community advisory group last year to oversee the hall design, in addition to the regular building committee. The university also has plans to build a men’s scholarship hall on the north end of the block when it receives funding.

Warren Corman, university architect, said he thought the halls would fit into the surrounding area.

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“I think the neighbors are going to like them,” he said. “They’re nice-looking facilities.”

Corman said KU was planning to incorporate ornamental railings, a chandelier and other fixtures from old Fraser Hall, which was demolished in 1965.

Roger Rieger, who graduated from KU with an accounting degree in 1965, is a residential real estate investor and developer. His wife, who graduated from KU with degrees in sociology and social welfare in 1967, has worked in child protective services and real estate.

Roger Rieger said although his brother Dennis, who graduated with a political science degree in 1972 and an MBA in 1974, didn’t live in a scholarship hall, he would appreciate having a hall built in his honor.

“He was a real Jayhawk, through and through,” Rieger said. “I think he would be proud to be associated with a scholarship hall. This gift was a way for us to leave something here that’s a lasting memorial to him.”