Cornell Wins Bid for New York City Tech Campus

Cornell University has been chosen by New York City to build a technology campus on Roosevelt Island with a grant of city-owned land and $100 million.

The campus Cornell proposed will occupy 2.1 million square feet, accommodate up to 2,500 students and cost more than $2 billion to build. A $350 million gift from an anonymous donor, the largest in Cornell’s history, will help foot the bill.

Other schools that expressed interest in New York City’s tech campus offer include Columbia University, Carnegie Mellon, and a consortium led by New York University and Stanford, which dropped its bid Friday. But Cornell, an anonymous source told The New York Times, has been the school of choice for a while. And it might not be the last.

“This is the first selection announcement for the Applied Sciences NYC initiative,” says a statement released by the city. “Productive discussions are ongoing with other respondents…and the possibility of additional science and engineering partnerships in the City is still open.”

Cornell plans to open an off-site location of the campus by 2012, with the first phase of permanent Roosevelt Island opening by 2017. The university will lease the land from the city for 100 years, after which it will have the opportunity to purchase it for $1.

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It’s potentially a mutually beneficial plan. Plotting a tech branch in New York City is an opportunity for Cornell to become the Stanford of the East Coast ? an incubator for new businesses (and their patents). Attracting prestigious technology-education institutions is another step in New York City’s relentless efforts to become the Silicon Valley of the East Coast.

“This is a momentous day catapulting New York City into the forefront of the 21st century economy and burnishing its place as the high-tech center of the East,” U.S. Sen. Charles E. Schumer said in a release.

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