Cornell University will build a tech and engineering campus on New York City’s Roosevelt Island. SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images

Cornell will build NYC applied science campus

Stacey Vanek Smith Dec 20, 2011
Cornell University will build a tech and engineering campus on New York City’s Roosevelt Island. SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images

Jeremy Hobson: Well now to New York City, specifically a little sliver of it in the middle of the East River called Roosevelt Island. New York City officials offered land and a $100 million to universities who wanted to develop a new science school there, and Cornell University has snagged the brass ring.

Marketplace’s Stacey Vanek Smith has more.


Stacey Vanek Smith: The 11-acre campus will serve a couple thousand students. At a press conference, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said this project will redefine the city’s economic future.

Michael Bloomberg: The campus is expected to spin off something like 600 new companies over the next three decades, which will create up to 30,000 permanent jobs. In a word, this project is going to be transformative.

A project like this could also help New York get a little economic distance from the financial sector, says Rolf Pendall with the Urban Institute.

Rolf Pendall: The dependence of the city and the state on Wall Street for its revenues is really pretty extreme.

But can dropping a building in the middle of a city really change its economic DNA? Pendall says if it’s done right, yes.

Pendall: Building a rich social, intellectual and entrepreneurial network that then becomes embedded into the city’s economic fabric.

The campus will reportedly be finished in 2017.

In New York, I’m Stacey Vanek Smith for Marketplace.

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