CHAPEL HILL - For a long time, UNC President Erskine Bowles wanted to rename the university system's headquarters for the family of C.D. Spangler, the billionaire businessman who was university president for 11 years. Problem was, Bowles knew that Spangler would not go for it.

"If you're trying to put their name on something, the answer is always 'no.' They always want the spotlight shined on someone else," Bowles said Friday. "Getting the complex named after them was no easy task. So we didn't ask them."

At a 40-minute ceremony attended by many retired university leaders, Bowles acknowledged that Spangler did at least play a role in shrinking the size and location of his name on the new sign out in front of the building.

Spangler took over as UNC president in 1986, bringing a businessman's perspective to a job upon which a massive imprint was already stamped. He succeeded William Friday, who presided for 30 years at UNC and continued trumpeting Friday's belief in an affordable public university. Friday was on hand for the ceremony.

Over the years, Spangler was a consistent and often quiet university benefactor. His most recent gift was a whopper: In May, he announced two new grants, making $26.9 million available for 96 distinguished professorships across the university system.

The UNC system's offices have long been known, blandly, as General Administration, and nobody Friday appeared broken up to see that terminology flushed. The main UNC system building was renamed the C.D. Spangler Jr. Building, while the connecting facility -- formerly known as the "annex" -- is now the Meredith Riggs Spangler Building. Collectively, it is the Spangler Center.

"I am more than a little uncomfortable with all this," Spangler joked. "I have looked around at all the names on all these [university] buildings, and most of those people are dead."