NEW YORK | Roosevelt Island Science Center

[Otie]

Mayor Bloomberg: New York City Ready To Declare War On Silicon Valley
December 19, 2011 8:05 PM

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) – Cornell University and the Technion Institute of Technology of Israel have been selected by Mayor Michael Bloomberg to help build a Roosevelt Island Science Center into a rival of California’s Silicon Valley.

It was a multi-billion dollar competition to build a 2 million square-foot applied science and engineering campus on Roosevelt Island that Bloomberg hopes will catapult New York City into becoming the leading developer of innovation and technology in the country, reports CBS 2’s Marcia Kramer.

“Today will be remembered as a defining moment,” Bloomberg said.

The mayor said Cornell and Technion have some incredible plans for the future.

“Their sweeping proposal envisions an 11-acre campus on the Goldwater Hospital site on Roosevelt Island right in the heart of our city. It promises to create a beehive of innovation and discovery,” Bloomberg said.

The program is part of Mayor Bloomberg’s efforts to build new businesses in New York and to develop the five boroughs as the technical business capital of the world.

“It really is a game changer. In fact, the economic impact will be even greater than we originally thought,” Bloomberg said. “It will generate more than $23 billion in economic activity over the next three decades as well as $1.4 billion in tax revenues.”

“This is a story of connectivity of connectivity between people and their ideas between researchers and business people between students and their dreams,” Cornell President David Skorton said.

The Technion president was told by city officials why they wanted his school to be part of the new development.

“You university took a country with a Jaffa oranges economy and turned it into a semi-conductor economy,” Professor Peretz Lavie said.
The mayor estimates that the school will generate 600 private start-up companies, which will generate in and of themselves another 30,000 jobs.

The school expects to open an off-site campaign in the next year. The first students will attend class on Roosevelt Island by 2017.

CORNELL WINS: NEXT STOP ROOSEVELT ISLAND | ArchPaper
EAST, NEWSLETTER | TUESDAY, DECEMBER 20, 2011 | JULIE V. IOVINE With additional reporting by Tom Stoelker.

With his hand essentially forced by a hasty withdraw of Stanford on Friday, and the hugely enticing carrot of a $350 million gift from Duty-Free billionaire and Cornell alum Charles Feeney, Mayor Bloomberg announced on Monday that the Cornell team will be building the NYC Tech Campus on Roosevelt Island. The terms “game changer” and “transformative” were bandied about with regularity throughout the mayor’s midday press conference, which was streamed live on the net to the delight of Cornell’s partnering campus, Technion—Israel Institute of Technology. The Israeli students’ digitally lapsed cheering added a techy touch.

The mayor said the plan was the boldest and most ambitious of the entries. Ultimately, the two million square foot campus will include housing for 2,500 students and 280 faculty members. A 150,000 square foot net-zero building just south of the Queensboro Bridge on the 10-acre site of Goldwater Hospital promises to be “the largest net-zero energy building in the eastern United States.”

The effort was praised for its community inclusiveness with over a half a million square feet of open space to be designed by Field Operations, $150 million in start up capital for spin-off businesses, and public school programming for 10,000 students. SOM’s green roofed net-zero building may have been the engineering coup de gras that put the other teams out of the running, but the waterfront access won over many.

For now, inclusiveness may have to stand in for connectedness. The island has one subway stop on the F line and a somewhat recently upgraded air tram. The Queensboro bridge sweeps right over it. A 2009 report on Roosevelt Island’s accessibility (AccessRI) commissioned by NY State Senator Jose Serrano and conducted by the Hunter College Department of Urban Affairs and Planning found that the existing infrastructure is in need of repair and already stretched to capacity. Infrastructure upgrades by the city to the tune of $100 million are part of the competition offerings. Noting that the current residents on the island “are struggling with a myriad of issues that range from problems caused by aging and neglected infrastructure to demographic and social changes” coupled with ”perceptions of inadequate governance that result in the feeling that their concerns are ignored and will never be addressed,” AccessRI called for legislation not only to improve the island’s physical connections on and between the island and the city but also to restructure its governance. Currently, the island is owned by the city but operated by a state-chartered corporation, the Roosevelt Island Operating Corporation (RIOC), a set-up that island residents complained lacked transparency and accessibility.

At Monday’s press conference, Mayor Bloomberg joked that he looked forward to seeing increased water taxi service on the East River and all around Roosevelt Island. But it will take more than water taxis to make Roosevelt Island and the NYTech Campus a tangible success story.

SOM'S PLAN FOR CORNELL'S TECH CAMPUS ON ROOSEVELT ISLAND.




PROPOSED PEDESTRIAN BRIDGE FROM MANHATTAN TO ROOSEVELT ISLAND. (COURTESY HUNTER COLLEGE)


CORNELL'S PROPOSAL IS FILLED WITH SUSTAINABLE CONSTRUCTION TECHNIQUES.

[Dac150]

I heard about this on WCBS a couple weeks ago . . . sounds exciting! New York definitely needs to get more acquainted with the tech industry.

[NYguy]

Some clips taken from the east river thread:


• Video Link


• Video Link

[NYguy]

http://blog.archpaper.com/wordpress/archives/29778

Will Cornell stand by SOM to build NYC Tech Campus?

December 27, 2011
Julie V. Iovine

Multiple factors helped the Cornell/Technion team win what is shaping up to be Mayor Bloomberg’s favorite super-scale legacy project. Stanford, the only real competition, withdrew; a windfall of a $350 million donation blew in; local Cornell alums pulled out the stops with petitions. High on that list is SOM’s preliminary design proposing a net-zero building and a permeable landscape, developed with Field Operations, woven in, over, and into multiple structures lending an interactive and public character to the entire campus.

This wholly sustainable, radically accessible design plan has become a signature of the project as the city ambitiously strives to become an East Coast high tech start-up incubator bar none. And yet it is unclear if SOM will remain on the job.

Amidst rumors that the same Cornell alumni who helped get the prize now want to see a Cornell architect get the job, Cornell administrators close to the project were vague when asked if the SOM team would be seeing the project through. “SOM has served us fantastically well,” said Kent Kleinman, the dean of Cornell’s College of Architecture, Art, and Planning (AAP). “The next phase will start immediately and proceed according to our standard RFP process. Our facilities department has to get its arms around the whole thing, but it’s fair to say, it’s wide open. The last word has not been spoken.” When asked about SOM’s response to news of the win, the dean said he had not spoken to the architects as of four days after the award was announced.

[sbarn]

It would be a shame if the SOM design gets shelved. This is an exciting project though, just wish it could be built sooner.

[Ch.G, Ch.G]

I was so happy when I heard that Cornell had beat out Stanford. IMO, it makes more sense to see a New York (state) institution win the right to build in New York City (where Cornell anyway already operates its medical college). What I found especially interesting (and relevant to this forum) was that Stanford's suburban nature played a large role in its failure to convince the city of its ability to undertake such a large urban project; almost all of its enormous land holdings are located in unincorporated areas (where it's the only game in town) and it simply wasn't prepared for the obstacles of urban development.

[NYguy]

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/26/ed...rtnership.html

Alliance Formed Secretly to Win Deal for Campus




By RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA
December 25, 2011

The first secret meeting took place last March, in a place no one would suspect: Beijing. For the second, in July, they holed up in the Cornell Club of New York, rather than a hotel where they might be noticed by outsiders. Over three days, more than a dozen top officials from Cornell University and the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology barely ventured out of that 14-story clubhouse near Grand Central Terminal.

The object of discussion was the tantalizing $400 million in real estate and infrastructure upgrades that the Bloomberg administration was dangling for someone to build a new graduate school of applied sciences. A reporter from The Chronicle of Higher Education, having learned that Peretz Lavie, Technion’s president, was in the country, could not pry loose his location or purpose. The veil of secrecy held.

It was not until summer’s end that David J. Skorton, Cornell’s president, told Robert K. Steel, the deputy mayor for economic development who was overseeing the contest for the science campus, that an alliance had been hammered out. “I wasn’t aware that they were dating,” Mr. Steel recalled, “and he called me up and said, ‘Good news, we’re getting married.’ ”

And the two universities waited until Oct. 18 — 10 days before the city’s deadline for proposals — to announce the union publicly. Last Monday, when their joint bid was crowned the winner of the city’s year-long, international competition, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg made it clear that the synergy between the two institutions was a critical factor......the most advantageous surprise was the partnership that Cornell, thought by many to be the likely bridesmaid to front-running Stanford University, forged with Technion, a winner of Nobel prizes and incubator of high-tech businesses that was one of the few overseas institutions the city explicitly invited to participate.

[NYguy]

A look back at the Stanford plan...

http://inhabitat.com/nyc/stanford-un...yc-proposal-1/



















Meanwhile, there's still talk of another science center in the City...

http://therealdeal.com/newyork/artic...370-jay-street
Brooklyn still hoping for NYU graduate science school


From left: Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz and a rendering of NYU's plans for 370 Jay Street

December 22, 2011

While many New Yorkers were celebrating Mayor Michael Bloomberg's selection of Cornell University to build a science school on Roosevelt Island, Brooklyn politicians were pinning their hopes on another phrase the mayor uttered during the press conference.

According to the New York Daily News, Bloomberg said he was still in talks with three other universities and could award grants for another graduate science school. Brooklynites hope that award goes to NYU so it can build a school at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's 370 Jay Street in Downtown Brooklyn.

"Wonderful as the Cornell project is, we're not stopping," said Borough President Marty Markowitz. "370 Jay Street is practically empty, doing nothing now but housing some switches... It's clear that 370 Jay Street is calling out for this kind of project."

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/broo...ticle-1.995108



Rendering of proposed NYU Center for Urban Sciences and Progress, to be located at 370 Jay St. in Downtown Brooklyn, an empty MTA building.

NYU wants to take the hulking building, which the MTA has sat on for years but recently announced plans to give up, and turn it into the Center for Urban Science and Progress - where scientists and engineers would work on problems vexing cities around the world.

The school acknowledged all along it couldn’t compete with more ambitious proposals by Cornell - and Stanford before it dropped out - but hoped the city would pick more than one winner. NYU officials said they could build the center with $20-$25 million of the city money for infrastructure fixes and moving the MTA's old equipment out of 370 Jay.

The city is also still negotiating with Columbia and Carnegie Mellon for the consolation prize.

“The mayor was very clear the competition continues,” said State Sen. Daniel Squadron (D-downtown Brooklyn), who joined with a group of other pols Wednesday to push for the school. “This is a two for one opportunity. You can do the Roosevelt Island campus from scratch for a billion dollars. You can do this for pennies on the dollar.”

[hammersklavier]

There's been a bit of criticism to this plan on the blogosphere...

[vandelay]

It's a shame that between the iconic Art-Deco Queensboro, and Kahn's FDR memorial there's going to be such a heaping, jagged mess of corporate mediocrity.

[NYguy]

The Brooklyn science center comes closer to reality...

http://www.crainsnewyork.com/article...301019961/1033
NYU nears deal on tech campus in Brooklyn
University asks city to buy out MTA, whose asking price keeps rising.

By Daniel Massey
January 1, 2012

It doesn't take an engineer to figure out that a solution for New York City Transit's former headquarters at 370 Jay St. could finally be at hand. But before Mayor Michael Bloomberg can tack a satisfying coda onto his ambitious applied-sciences campus competition, three parties—the city, which owns the building; the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which has a long-term lease on it; and New York University, which is clamoring to expand in downtown Brooklyn—must agree on how to transfer the building to the university for its proposed Center for Urban Science and Progress, or CUSP.

Tech campus proposals by Columbia University and Carnegie Mellon University are also in play, but the NYU negotiation has taken center stage since the mayor announced last month that he would consider runners-up in the contest that crowned Cornell University king.

NYU has asked the city for $20 million to help buy out the MTA, based largely on numbers thrown around during previous attempts to revive the beleaguered building, sources familiar with the proposal said. But the MTA's asking price has now ballooned to $50 million to $60 million.

The city, for its part, has already spent all $100 million it had earmarked for the applied-sciences competition. It's possible officials could come up with funds to facilitate a deal for 370 Jay St., though it's not clear where that money would come from. NYU would have to kick in some cash, and incentives and other creative financing could be worked out.

[NYC4Life]

Interesting how Downtown Brooklyn, in particular Jay Street is becoming a tech school mecca with Polytechnic Institute and CUNY City Tech already based there with potentially more campuses on the way.

[NYguy]

http://www.dnainfo.com/20120110/uppe...bright-futures

Two More Tech Campuses Planned for New York



January 10, 2012
By Amy Zimmer

Cornell University may have been crowned the winner of the city’s tech campus contest, but the Bloomberg administration is still in active negotiations with three other bidders. The city may choose more than one runner-up, according to sources familiar with the process. A city official said the Economic Development Corporation remains hopeful of creating another "partnership or partnerships" and is expected to make an announcement in "the coming weeks." Regardless of what happens during talks with the city, at least two of the ambitious projects seem poised to move ahead, with the third bid a strong possibility, too.

Carnegie Mellon with Steiner Studios at the Brooklyn Navy Yard
The Pittsburgh-based Carnegie Mellon vision for a Brooklyn Navy Yard campus is in partnership with the television and movie production facility, Steiner Studios, which envisions the program as part of the company's master plan for a 60-acre center with 30 sound stages to be built over 10 to 12 years.

NYU's Plans for Downtown Brooklyn's 370 Jay St.
Downtown Brooklyn's business community and elected officials will continue pushing for NYU's Center for Urban Science and Progress program to take over 370 Jay St. — a decrepit and mostly empty city owned building presently leased to the MTA.

Columbia Looks to Build Its Center at Its New Manhattanville Campus
Columbia is still hoping to build its Institute for Data Sciences and Engineering at the same location where it is already building a $6 billion campus on 17 acres of Manhattanville. The institute would occupy three buildings and, over 20 years, grow to more than 1.1 million square feet of laboratories, classrooms and facilities encouraging collaboration with entrepreneurs, investors, New York-based enterprises and other outside partners

A rendering of NYU's Center for Urban Science and Progress at 370 Jay St.




NYU's tech campus proposal would take over an "eyesore" city-owned building leased by the MTA, which has the master lease and would rent it out.




A rendering of NYU's Center for Urban Science and Progress, complete with ping pong tables.




The Steiner Studios lot at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. The film and TV production facility wants to bring Carnegie Mellon to start a entertainment tech campus at the Navy Yard.




An aerial shot of the Navy Yard, which shows Steiner Studios in the lower right corner. Steiner hopes to expand to 60 acres at the 300-acre facility.




The Steiner Studios entrance at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. The manufacturing enclave has enabled the production facility to have huge spaces and easy loading and unloading zones.




Steiner Studios is already doubling to 600,000 square feet and wants to keep growing.

[NYguy]

http://newyork.ibtimes.com/articles/...elt-island.htm

Building New York: SOM Reshapes Roosevelt Island




By Roland Li
January 14, 2012

Last July, Mayor Bloomberg announced a request for proposals to develop a science and engineering campus at Roosevelt Island, Governors Island or the Brooklyn Navy Yard, kicking off a furious competition between some of the country's top schools. Cornell University, along with partner Technion -- Israel Institute of Technology, would emerge triumphant in December, thanks in part to a $350 million gift.

But equally crucial was an intense three-month design process, led by Roger Duffy, a partner of Skidmore Owings & Merrill (SOM) and founder of its Education Lab. SOM connected with Cornell through a mutual contact, who was also involved with SOM's work at the New School's new academic building at 65 Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. After considering the financials and choosing Roosevelt Island as a target, Cornell moved foward and hired SOM, and the architects and school officials began assembling a plan. But first, they had to identify the goals of the project.

A central idea was that of "hubs" -- instead of having a complex of closed-off silos, SOM's plan incorporates walkways between buildings that make lateral paths. The buildings are grouped around associated disciplines, such as a "health hub," which will include biomedical and engineering fields, and a "mobile social hub," which will including mobile technology and social marketing studies. The hubs are expected to expand or be replaced as the complex develops, so flexibility in the structures is key.

When envisioning the site, SOM benefitted from the experience of designing one the first zero net energy buildings in the Northeast: P.S. 62, a 70,000 square foot school in Staten Island that was approved by the City Council in December. Along with the New School building, P.S. 62 seeks to maximize natural light, and a similar approach occured at Roosevelt Island.

While Roosevelt Island is sparsely developed by New York standards, the design for the new campus seeks to engage three communities, said Duffy, creating gathering points for the students, relating to the Roosevelt Island neighborhood and relating to the city as a whole. Adjacent to the exterior walkways will be courtyards and retail, designed in partnership with landscape architect James Corner Field Operations. Public space will form pedestrian access, with a focus on the western side, and Duffy hopes the complex will complement the Franklin D. Roosevelt to the south and the denser buildings to the north, although some residents have expressed concern over the planned demolition of the Goldwater Hospital, which sits on the site.

http://i.imgur.com/TebUz.jpg
A rendering of P.S. 62, planned to be one of the first zero net energy buildings in the Northeast. (SOM)

[NYguy]

http://www.observer.com/2012/02/roos...l-tech-campus/

Roosevelt Renderers! Top Architects Tapped to Design Cornell Tech Campus

By Matt Chaban
Feb 28, 2012

The innovation offered by a new tech campus on Roosevelt Island is not limited to New York’s technology sector but the design one, as well. Almost every bid had soaring renderings and flashy flythroughs, most notably the winning entry from Cornell. Now the upstate university has announced six of the world’s top firms, including a few local favorites, are in the running to design the new tech campus.

SOM, the firm that designed Cornell’s original entry and one of the world’s largest, made the cut. They have designed everything from the Lever House to the masterplan for Columbia’s new Manhattanville Campus. Local stars Diller, Scofidio + Renfro, responsible for the High Line and Lincoln Center, were tapped, as was New York fanboy Rem Koolhaas and his Office of Modern Architecture. He has yet to build in the city, but he just completed a celebrated expansion to Cornell’s architecture school.

Steven Holl is another local boy on the list, one of the dean’s of New York architecture. He has designed a philosophy department offices for NYU, is completing a sports center for Columbia at the northern tip of Manhattan and is perhaps best known for his funky residence halls at MIT. Morphosis, run by LA’s Pritzker Prize winner Thom Mayne, knows a thing about New York campuses, having built the new metallic monolith for Cooper Union in Astor Place. And the ostensible dark horse is Philadelphia’s Bohlin Cywinski Jackson, a firm that makes some sense given that their most famous work is as designers of all the Apple Stores. Perhaps a giant glass cube for Roosevelt Island?

[pico44]

Originally Posted by NYguy

http://www.observer.com/2012/02/roos...l-tech-campus/

Roosevelt Renderers! Top Architects Tapped to Design Cornell Tech Campus

By Matt Chaban
Feb 28, 2012

Am I crazy or is this HUGE news? I always assumed that the uninspired SOM design was a final proposal. To hear that the vision is yet to be decided, and that the finalists are of such high quality is exhilirating. I honestly don't know whom to root for, as I love so many of them. SOM has produced some fantastic designs for this city recently but they're all over so forget them. Skiller et al are local heroes and have yet to have a mistep. Their innovative designs make me feel they're destined for a Pritzker as soon as a few more major comissions come in. And I can't wait to see what Koolhaas comes up with. His proposed addition to the uptown Whitney was one of the most heartbreaking missed oppurtunities in recent history. And I expect something great from Morphosis, who gave us one of the most gorgeous buildings I have ever seen as part of the Cooper Union. Though I think my personal favorite is Stephen Holl. Another local hero whom I consider that best living American architect and shamefully underrepresented in his hometown. And the fact that he has yet to be given his Pritzker is pretty ridiculous, but thats another discussion....

Anyhow, exciting stuff. I certainly I hope all renderings are made puclic.

[NYguy]

Originally Posted by pico44

Am I crazy or is this HUGE news? I always assumed that the uninspired SOM design was a final proposal.

Anyhow, exciting stuff. I certainly I hope all renderings are made puclic.

I'm sure they will all be flashy, given the amount of attention given to this development and what it means for the City.

[NYguy]

http://www.dnainfo.com/new-york/2012...d-about-future

Hospital Patients Forced Out as Roosevelt Island Tech Campus Moves In



May 3, 2012
By Amy Zimmer

The tech campus heralded as making New York City even more cutting edge isn't being celebrated by everyone on Roosevelt Island.

For Armand Xama, 30, a paraplegic injured in a diving accident five years ago, it means he needs to start looking for a new home. Xama has lived at the island's Goldwater Hospital for nearly two years, but the nursing home and long-term rehabilitation center is set to close by December 2013 to make way for Cornell University's tech campus. Xama is worried he'll be put in a nursing home.

Over the next 18 months, roughly 800 patients will have to be relocated from the 9.9-acre complex on the southern end of Roosevelt Island, built in 1939 as the first public hospital devoted to chronic diseases. City officials had announced in 2010 that the outmoded Goldwater was slated to close but had not released a moving date at that time. The timeline was only announced after selecting the winning tech campus, which expects its first building on the island in 2017.

Few patients know where they're going yet, though the city’s Health and Hospitals Corporation plans to move some to a renovated space in Harlem’s former North General Hospital. Others are going to a new apartment building that will rise on East Harlem's Metropolitan Hospital campus, and more will be scattered across various housing facilities across the city.

[NYguy]

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/09/ar...lnyc-tech.html

CornellNYC Chooses Its Architect

By ROBIN POGREBIN
May 8, 2012

After a competition that included some of the world’s most prominent architects, Thom Mayne of the firm Morphosis has been selected to design the first academic building for Cornell University’s high-tech graduate school campus on Roosevelt Island in New York City.

“The goal here is to develop a one-of-a-kind institution,” Mr. Mayne said in an interview at his New York office. (Morphosis also has an office in Los Angeles.) “It’s got to start from rethinking — innovating — an environment.”

The building will get extra attention as the first part of an engineering and applied-science campus charged by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg with spurring New York City’s high-tech sector. It needs to embody the latest in environmental advances and to incorporate the increasingly social nature of learning today by creating ample spaces for people to interact. And to succeed, Mr. Mayne said, it must visually connect to the rest of the city, because its setting is surrounded by water.

There are no snazzy architectural images yet, nor can Mr. Mayne speculate about what shape the building will take or what materials he might use. “I haven’t even seen the site plan yet,” he said. The only certainty is that Mr. Mayne will not inaugurate Cornell’s new campus by designing some kind of ivory tower.

“I like being able to tell you that I don’t have any bloody idea what it’s going to look like,” he said.

[vandelay]

I foresee a starchitecture mess like MIT in the early 2000s.