PLANNING AND LEADERSHIP FOR A BETTER WORLD
PLANNING AND LEADERSHIP FOR A BETTER WORLD As part of its Applied Sciences NYC initiative, which seeks to increase New York City’s capacity for applied sciences and transform the city’s economy, Mayor Bloomberg this week announced the awarding of $100 million to a university consortium to build a NYC Tech Campus on Roosevelt Island.
The year-long a competition for this program brought in seven proposals from 17 leading institutions around the world, according to Nature. The Cornell-Technion proposal, Bloomberg said, was the boldest and most ambitious, as it included an enrollment of 2,000 students, 300 faculty and 2 million square feet of state-of-the-art classroom and research space. Additionally, the facility will offer incubator and spin-out space for start-up companies and a $150 million fund for start-ups that stay in the city for three years. Scientists and engineers at the campus will also work with mathematics and science teachers at local schools.
An artist’s rendition of the proposed NYC Tech Campus on Roosevelt Island. (Source: Cornell University)
The $100 million from the city will assist with site infrastructure, construction and related costs. Cornell/Technion has agreed to a 99-year lease for the Roosevelt Island site, with an option to purchase the land at the end of the term for $1. Cornell will develop and own the campus itself, and will assume financial responsibility for its establishment and operations.
In addition to the announcement of this agreement, Cornell also announced (last week) that it received a $350 million gift from an anonymous donor, the largest contribution in the university’s history and one of the largest in the history of American higher education, which will support the extraordinary vision of the NYCTech Campus project.
The campus will be organized around three interdisciplinary hubs: Connective Media, Healthier Life and the Built Environment. Cornell will immediately offer Master and Doctoral degrees in areas such as Computer Science, Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Information Science and Engineering. In addition, after receiving the required accreditation, the campus will also offer innovative Technion-Cornell dual Master of Applied Sciences degrees.
Cornell/Technion’s proposed NYCTech Campus will combine cutting-edge technologies to create one of the most environmentally friendly and energy efficient campuses in the world. The proposed phase one academic building, if completed today, would be the largest net-zero energy building in the eastern United States – meaning it will harvest as much energy from solar power and geothermal wells as it consumes on an annual basis.
Plans include the use of a solar array that will generate 1.8 megawatts at daily peak and a 400 well geothermal field, which uses the constant temperature of the earth to cool buildings in the summer and heat them in the winter. The well field and solar array would each be largest in New York City if built today. The campus will not only employ some of the most sophisticated environmental technology in the world, it will also help develop them, serving as a living laboratory for the Built Environment hub.
The campus is expected to generate $23 billion in economic activity over the next three decades, Bloomberg said, as well as $1.4 billion in tax revenue. Building it will create 20,000 construction jobs and 8,000 permanent jobs to operate it. These jobs, Bloomberg added, run the gamut from building staff to office workers -- not just "people with Ph.D.s."
Additionally, the campus is expected to generate nearly 600 spin-off companies over the projection period – projected to create up to an additional 30,000 permanent jobs. The strength of both Cornell and the Technion in generating entrepreneurial activity was one of the major factors in the selection of the consortium by the city.
The first students will start in temporary off-site space in the fall, according to Cornell Provost Kent Fuchs; the university expects to break ground by 2015.
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