City Council approves Cornell NYC Tech campus

From left: City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and a Cornell NYC Tech rendering
From left: City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and a Cornell NYC Tech rendering

Cornell University has the city’s go-ahead to build a technology campus on Roosevelt Island, which paves the way for construction to begin next year on the 2.1 million-square-foot project, Crain’s reported.

The City Council approved the development yesterday.

“We’ve been talking about this project for a while now,” council member Jessica Lappin told Crain’s. “It’s fantastic to be past this very significant hurdle, and to have the land-use process come to a conclusion and allow them to get started.”

With construction to begin in 2014, Lappin told Crain’s that the vote keeps the development on track to open in 2017.

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As reported, the City Planning Commission greenlighted plans for the campus in late March. The panel’s approval followed the thumbs-up from Manhattan Community Board 8 in December.

The development’s first phase encompasses 790,000 square feet, which will include the school’s first academic building; all work won’t be completed until 2037.

When finished, the campus will house about 2,000 graduate students. For now, a “beta” group of computer science grad students are studying inside a Chelsea space that was donated by Google. [Crain’s]Zachary Kussin