Forest City Ratner to develop first Cornell NYC Tech buildings

A rendering of Cornell NYC Tech and Forest City Ratner CEO MaryAnne Gilmartin
A rendering of Cornell NYC Tech and Forest City Ratner CEO MaryAnne Gilmartin

Cornell University today announced that it has reached a preliminary deal with developer Forest City Ratner to be the “master developer” for the first phase of work at the school’s technology campus on Roosevelt Island, Crain’s reported. The developer will build two buildings.

Forest City Ratner will own the second building, which will measure 200,000 square feet and house tech tenants from the private sector. Cornell will lease roughly 50,000 square feet for school purposes.

The company will also construct the campus’ first building — a 150,000-square-foot facility that the school will use for classroom space — which it will build as a developer for hire.

Altogether, the campus will have 2.1 million square feet of facilities for nearly 2,000 full-time graduate students when finished.

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Construction at the campus is slated to begin next year, as previously reported. The school won’t reach completion until 2037.

Forest City Ratner will also manage construction of campus open spaces and infrastructure, though Cornell officials told Crain’s this part of the deal has yet to be finalized.

Morphosis is designing the first building; Weiss/Manfredi will design the second. [Crain’s]Zachary Kussin