From left: Rendering of new buildings for City College of New York, Jerome L. Greene Science Center in West Harlem and Cornell NYC Tech on Roosevelt Island
Over the next 20 years, academic buildings will rise all over the city as universities and colleges shell out billions of dollars to develop millions of square feet of new facilities.
Higher-education institutions allotted a total of $4.2 billion between 2008 and today, and are expected to spend $10 billion in the next five years, the Wall Street Journal reported.
The biggest facilities under construction are largely for scientific research. In the next several years, there will be two brain research centers in Harlem, at the City College of New York and at Columbia University’s forthcoming expansion in the area.
Fordham University has also begun work on the first stage of its $1.6 billion project to overhaul its Lincoln Center campus, starting with a new law school building. Cornell University plans to start construction next month on a 12-acre Roosevelt Island site that will create 2.1 million square feet of residential and academic space – and cost about $2 billion.
The CUNY project in Harlem involves a $706 million two-building complex along 135th Street between St. Nicholas Terrace and Convent Avenue. The complex with have nearly 400,000 square feet of lab space.
Columbia is also at work expanding its new Manhattanville campus across 17 acres – a $6.8 million undertaking that will take about 20 years. [WSJ] — Mark Maurer