According to the Wall Street Journal, Mayor Bloomberg plans to announce that Cornell’s won the competition for an applied-science campus in NYC. They beat out the rest of the “shortlist,” which was down to Carnegie-Mellon, NYU, Cornell, and us, after Stanford dropped out on Friday.

Not all hope is lost; even if Bloomberg awards Roosevelt Island to Cornell, we could still score some cush government funds for M’ville. Since our proposal didn’t include any of the three locations Bloomberg suggested, if we get funding, we’d still receive more or less what we wanted to gain in the first place.

Seems like all New York is gettin’ gobbled up by universities these days.

As reported by basically everyone, Stanford has withdrawn its bid to construct a science and engineering campus in New York as part of Mayor Bloomberg’s campaign to reinvigorate the city’s reputation as a technology hub. Proposals from Columbia, Cornell, NYU, and Carnegie Mellon are still under consideration. Originally considered a front-runner in the competition, Stanford claims to have withdrawn due to an inability for the school and city to “reach an agreement on a number of points, including whether the school could withdraw from the project without penalties” and the decision was “partly a result of the different cultures and expectations of a private university and a major city,” according to a Bloomberg source.

We reported on the announcement that Columbia had made it to the Mayor’s “short list” of proposals a few weeks back. In their December issue the Blue & White examines in-depth the impact of Columbia’s plan, which conveniently fits into the grand Manhattanville strategy. Look out for the print magazine on campus next week!

Illustration by Eduardo Santana, CC '13

From the Issue: Bloomberg Means Business, Again

“We have presidential candidates who don’t even believe in science… it’s mind-boggling!” New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg exclaimed at a recent international economic forum on Columbia’s campus. Science has certainly been on Bloomberg’s mind of late (not to mention for most of his life—he did, after all, make his name as a tech entrepreneur before it was cool). After his early-morning eviction of Zuccotti Park, his most publicized crusade over the past few months aims to reinvent New York as the next Silicon Valley. The mayor has called for universities all over the world to submit proposals for new tech campuses within the city.

Bloomberg extended the invitation on July 19th, promising free city land and $100 million in funding to the winning plan. The mayor speculated enthusias- tically that the innovation (and the further innovation it sparks) could bring the city $6 billion in economic activity, and somewhere around 400 new companies with 22,000 new permanent jobs—what he called a “real game changer for this city.”

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Columbia (not pictured) keeps pace with the front runners

You may remember that Columbia is one of the participants in Mayor Bloomberg’s much-publicized competition for the construction of a new science and engineering campus (or two!) somewhere within New York. According to DNA info, Bloomberg recently hinted that of the original seven applications, four have made it past the first cut—though he quickly and mysteriously told the media “that’s-not-what-I-meant-but-maybe-sort-of-could-be-true-anyway.”

Whatever you make of the Mayor’s waffling, the president of ESC, Nate Levick, SEAS ’12, spoke with Brian Wagner, who is working on an article on the Bloomberg competition for the upcoming issue of The Blue & White. He confirmed that we’re still in the race: ”recently the Dean [Pena-Mora] informed me that the CU proposal has indeed made it to the ‘short list’ of candidates for the award.” This is exciting news for Columbia and would indicate that, if Bloomberg does indeed select two proposals, we’ve got a 50% chance of winning (you don’t even need to be in SEAS to do that math).

The Mayor is due to announce his decision in January. Be sure to check out the article in the December issue of The Blue & White for the full story on Columbia’s proposal and how we stack up against the competition.

Inane metaphor via Wikimedia

May gain a friend soon

Bloomberg’s recent proposal that aims to lure top engineering universities around the world to New York with a pledge of $100 million to be put towards a new campus (either on Governor’s Island, Roosevelt Island, or the Brooklyn Navy Yard) has universities across the country scrambling to send in their applications.  Big names that have expressed interest include Stanford, Cornell, and NYU, so it probably doesn’t come as a surprise that today, PrezBo has officially thrown Columbia’s hat into the ring. That being said, with the proposals due tomorrow, our administrators certainly didn’t leave much margin for error.

Some major points touched on within the proposal (PDF):

• Columbia will build or renovate another 3 buildings on the Manhattanville Campus, adding 1.1 million additional square feet, which will make up the new “Institute of Data Sciences and Engineering.”
• The Institute will consist of five specialized interdisciplinary research centers: U.S. and New Media Center, Smart Cities Center, Health Analytics Center, Cybersecurity Center, and Financial Analytics Center.
• Since Columbia already has the necessary building permits, the project is “more than shovel ready”—a boon for Columbia, given Bloomberg’s goal of having the campus open by 2015.
• Phase I of construction: By 2020, Columbia will have completed the construction of a 443,000 sq ft facility, housing 40 new faculty and 600 grad students. By 2022, there will be a total of 72 new faculty and 1,080 new grad students.
• Phase II will be completed by 2032, and involves renovating a 220,000 sq ft building to house 20 more faculty and 300 grad students, and building a 520,000 sq ft building for another 75 faculty and 1,125 grad students.

Noticeably, the Columbia proposal contrasts from the others in that it only adds to the current Manhattanville expansion plans, rather than utilizing any of the sites Bloomberg has proposed. The administration seems to be hoping Bloomberg will be pleased at not having to donate city land to the expansion, but we’ll have to wait and see. And given Bloomberg’s recent statements on the institute, he may end up spreading the love to multiple universities anyways.

Engineer via Wikimedia Commons