Roosevelt Island-Cornell tech campus megaproject kicks off

From the Queens Courier:

Construction kicked off Tuesday on the $2 billion Roosevelt Island Cornell Tech campus, which many predict will be a feeder of skilled entrepreneurs for the western Queens technology community.

Mayor Bill de Blasio and his predecessor, Michael Bloomberg, were both in attendance to support the building of the applied sciences campus, which will span 12 acres on Roosevelt Island and house 2,000 graduate students and hundreds of faculty and staff. The first phase of the campus is expected to open in the summer of 2017.

“Mr. Mayor, you remember a phrase from a great American movie, ‘if you build it, they will come’? I think this epitomizes it,” de Blasio said to his predecessor. “I think Mayor Bloomberg’s efforts to create an environment for the tech sector had an extraordinary impact. This is one of the signature elements and we are proud to be building upon that tradition.”

Cornell Tech, which was selected by the city’s Economic Development Corporation over 17 other proposed schools in 2011, has been running out of Google’s Chelsea building since 2013.

Community Board from hell opposed to development outside their district

From DNA Info:

The construction of the Cornell NYC Tech campus on Roosevelt Island will bring traffic and pollution to Astoria, where the only bridge to the island is located, Astoria Community Board members said during its meeting Tuesday night.

The community board however has little say over the development plans because the project is located within the area of Manhattan Community Board 8.

“They [Manhattan Community Board] are getting a beautiful building and we are getting all the garbage,” said Vinicio Donato, Community Board 1's chairman.

Construction will start in 2014 and the campus will open its doors to the first students in 2017. It will take another 21 years to complete the campus, which will eventually host 2,500 students and sprawl over 2-million square feet.

Astoria Community Board members said they are worried that the university, both during its construction period and once it is operational, will bring too much traffic, pollution and noise to the neighborhood, especially in the area surrounding 36th Avenue where the bridge is located.

When has CB1 ever been against development? Or are the players just upset that they aren't getting a piece of the action for this one?

“We’ve heard all these beautiful stories about the project many times,” said George Stamatiades, a board member. “If you are only expecting a six percent increase in the volume of traffic coming through our community, there won’t be that many people on that island.”

That came from Mr. UPZONING. UPZONING. UPZONING?

Bloomberg doesn't care what you think

From the Daily News:

East Harlem community leaders are furious that Mayor Bloomberg is rushing to spend more than $300 million to develop three parcels of public land in their neighborhood — all part of what they say is a huge hidden subsidy to Cornell University’s new tech campus to be built on Roosevelt Island.

When Bloomberg revealed in December that he had selected Cornell to build the new $2 billion science school, he claimed the city’s only aid would be 11 acres of public land at the southern end of the island, plus $100 million for infrastructure improvements.

He never mentioned East Harlem’s contribution.

But as part of the deal, Bloomberg agreed to relocate by October 2013 hundreds of patients from Coler-Goldwater Hospital, a city-run long-term care facility that partially sits on the proposed island site.

To meet that deadline — and a possible ground-breaking for the new campus before Bloomberg leaves office — city officials are racing to erect several facilities in East Harlem that will house as many as 700 Coler-Goldwater patients.

They never bothered to ask locals what they wanted done with that land, according Community Board 11, which voted unanimously in mid June to oppose them.

Residents say they are amazed at how City Hall fast-tracked these projects.

The mayor issued a rarely used waiver to allow the new 99th St. building to be taller than zoning rules allow, while construction of the new North General building is being permitted six days a week starting at 7 a.m.

Where will the sick people go?

From DNA Info:

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

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.

Goldwater's sister facility at the northern end of Roosevelt Island, Coler, will still have 800 beds for rehab patients, officials said.

Goldwater is presently home to 476 patients who have suffered spinal-cord injuries, strokes or have degenerative conditions such as cerebral palsy and require care focused on rehabilitation and improving functions for daily living, HHC officials said.

Another 323 are medically fragile patients in need of long-term acute care that can’t be provided at other hospitals. More than 100 of these patients are on ventilators — one of the largest such programs in the country.

For these most serious patients, the former North General hospital will have 201 beds. Another 164 beds will be created there for the rehab patients, HHC officials said.

What will happen to more than 400 other patients is less clear, for now.

Easier said than done

From the NY Post:

The city’s hospital system has promised to empty Goldwater Hospital on Roosevelt Island within two years to make way for the new graduate engineering campus envisioned by Mayor Bloomberg — and now it’s scrambling to find places for more than 500 long-term patients.

The race against the clock began when Cornell University and the Technion Israel Institute of Technology were selected last week as the winners of a worldwide competition to build a $2 billion applied-sciences school on Roosevelt Island, heralded by the mayor as a “game changer” intended to make New York a worthy competitor to Silicon Valley.

Cornell immediately announced that it intends to open the first phase of its 11-acre facility, encompassing 300,000 square feet, in 2017.

But that schedule is dependent on Goldwater being emptied by the end of 2013, an aggressive plan that would also allow the mayor to stage a ceremony heralding its demolition before he leaves office. Cornell hopes to start construction in 2015.

Officials of the Health and Hospitals Corp. insist they’ll meet the tight deadline.

One person involved in the process said that would require a herculean effort.

“It seems unlikely,” said the source. “At the least, this is a really ambitious target date given how far they’ve gotten so far.”

Cornell wins campus prize

From AM-NY:

Roosevelt Island, known for its iconic tram and sweeping view of Manhattan's East Side, will get a major makeover courtesy of Cornell University.

The Ivy League school is joining forces with the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology to build a 2 million-square-foot science and engineering campus for grad students, city officials announced Monday. The initiative is part of the Bloomberg administration's goal to turn New York into a tech hot spot to rival Silicon Valley.

"By adding a new state-of-the-art institution to our landscape, we will educate tomorrow's entrepreneurs and create the jobs of the future," said Mayor Michael Bloomberg at a news conference at Weill Cornell Medical College on the Upper East Side.

Cornell-Technion was chosen among seven candidates that made proposals. The campus, which will include student housing, will be built in stages and won't be finished for another 30 years.