New York City named Cornell University and its partner, the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, as the winning institutions in its hard-fought competition to build an applied-science campus on donated city land.
The campus is “a dream that we have long held,” David J. Skorton, president of Cornell University, told Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg at a news conference Monday at Cornell’s medical school in Manhattan.
Mr. Bloomberg conceived of the competition as a way to trade prime unused city land and money for a chance to attract a leading research university to stimulate the type of technology-driven innovation and economic growth associated with locales such as California’s Silicon Valley and the Greater Boston area.
With the Cornell-Technion partnership, the city has won the promise of a project that eventually will bring 2,500 students and nearly 280 faculty to Roosevelt Island, a two-mile spit of land between Manhattan and Queens, and that will increase by 70 percent the number of full-time graduate engineering students in the city.
“This really is a wonderful day for New York,” Mr. Bloomberg said at the hastily arranged briefing, which also included the president of Technion, Peretz Lavie.
The selection of a winner hadn’t been expected until January, but the process concluded quickly after two almost-simultaneous events on Friday, when Cornell announced an anonymous $350-million donation in support of its bid, and the other leading contender, Stanford University, withdrew. The source of the gift was revealed on Monday to be the Atlantic Philanthropies, a charity founded by Charles F. Feeney, a Cornell alumnus and a billionaire who has pledged to give away his fortune during his lifetime.
Stanford supporters complained privately after their university’s withdrawal, suggesting the city began imposing tough financial conditions in an apparent belief that the university was so eager to win that it would accept virtually any terms.
Publicly, however, Stanford was circumspect. “With respect to today’s news,” said Stanford’s chief spokeswoman, Lisa Lapin, “we congratulate Cornell and wish both Cornell and New York City success in fulfilling their vision.”
Three other finalists—Carnegie Mellon, Columbia, and New York Universities—made proposals for smaller parcels of land that the city has also offered. City officials said they’re still considering those ideas and expect announcements concerning them in January. “The competition is not over,” Mr. Bloomberg said.
Questions in Some Quarters
If it did in fact squeeze Stanford on finances, New York City may have already undercut its big-picture objectives, say some experts who have studied how university partnerships with the private sector can fuel entrepreneurship and economic growth.
Stanford is the driving force behind the success of Silicon Valley, said Lesa Mitchell, vice president for the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation’s initiatives focused on advancing innovation. Its success there, like that of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the Boston area, makes clear the primary importance of universities’ getting close to companies on multiple levels, Ms. Mitchell said.
In the case of Stanford, its president, John L. Hennessy, “is a serial entrepreneur” leading an institution with “a phenomenal history of relationships between companies and the university, especially in the engineering school,” Ms. Mitchell said. Cornell, by contrast, has shown some history of antagonism toward industry, she said.
The most notable example, she said, is Cornell’s multiyear lawsuit against the Hewlett-Packard Company over a computer-technology patent. That battle ended with a settlement only last year, after HP—a company founded by Stanford graduates—was ordered to pay $71-million, less than what the two sides spent in total on legal fees.
If New York City’s goals were to create “an entrepreneurial ecosystem, I would say, just on face value, Stanford has a greater history, literally linked to an entrepreneurial ecosystem,” Ms. Mitchell said.
And Gina Neff, an assistant professor of communication at the University of Washington who has just finished writing a book about New York City’s technology boom in the 1990s, said neither Cornell nor Stanford appear to be the answer to what Mr. Bloomberg is seeking.
Ms. Neff said her study showed that New York City’s success with technology stems from its existing strengths in publishing and advertising, and she suggested the city should emphasize developing “content” for technology rather than pursuing engineering or computer science.
“This is the wrong way to go to actually encourage innovation,” she said. “It might have other great impacts for the city, it might use land in interesting ways, it might get more financial and human capital investment in New York City, but it’s not the clearest, cleanest, easiest, most direct way to get to building an innovative region.”
But Jonathan Bowles, executive director of the Center for an Urban Future, a public-policy organization that focuses on promoting New York City development, said he’s confident that the plan for Roosevelt Island will work and that Cornell-Technion is capable of carrying it out.
Technion is a critical part of the plan, as it “has shown a real affinity for doing this kind of thing,” Mr. Bowles said.
While Cornell alumni have claim to creating more than 2,600 companies worldwide, companies led by Technion graduates employ 85 percent of Israel’s technical work force, the universities said.
Mr. Bloomberg noted that Mr. Lavie just came from Stockholm for ceremonies where Dan Shechtman, a professor of materials science at Technion, was awarded the 2011 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. “This is as exciting as a Nobel ceremony,” Mr. Lavie said at the Cornell briefing.
High Hopes in the City
Mr. Bloomberg, who has made clear his hope to get the projects under way before his final term expires at the end of 2013, said the Cornell-Technion proposal won because it was “far and away the boldest and most ambitious,” involving the greatest numbers of students, faculty, and building space.
The mayor also cited Cornell-Technion’s promises to help children in New York City’s public schools, to pursue environmentally friendly construction, and to offer a $150-million fund to support new companies that maintain activity in the city for at least three years.
Dr. Skorton, answering questions from reporters, rejected speculation that Cornell, with the new venture alongside its existing medical school in Manhattan, might be abandoning its home campus in Ithaca. He said groups representing both current students and alumni have made clear their belief that the expansion will benefit the overall institution.
He also offered assurances to existing New York City universities that Cornell was coming in a spirit of partnership. “This is not an exercise in exclusion or winning,” he said. “This is an exercise in inclusion and having all the ships rise in this fine city.”
Cornell-Technion plans to begin the venture at a temporary location in 2012, with the first phase at Roosevelt Island opening no later than 2017, after the city finishes relocating an existing hospital at the site. It expects a 1.3-million square-foot campus costing $2-billion, with classrooms, labs and dormitories, by 2027. The plan calls for three main divisions at the site: “Connective Media, Healthier Life, and the Built Environment.”
The New York City Economic Development Corporation carried out a study that predicts the project will generate more than $23-billion in economic activity in its first three decades. The city’s terms include a 99-year lease with an option then to purchase the site for $1.
The land is currently occupied by Goldwater Memorial Hospital, which has expansion and merger plans at a new location. Although Stanford supporters suggested that its withdrawal was driven in part by concerns about toxic-waste liability at the site, Mr. Bloomberg reiterated his confidence that that was an insignificant issue. The city has dug test holes at the site, he said, “and for New York City land, this is pretty clean.”
Stanford supporters also described the city as unwilling to guarantee its talk of “up to $100-million” in infrastructure support for the project. In its announcement Monday, the city said Cornell “will receive” the $100-million.
Asked about his overall handling of Stanford, Mr. Bloomberg said he saw the university’s withdrawal largely as a case of its realizing the project did not fit its needs at the current time.
“I would hope that, down the road, Stanford comes back,” he said. “I think that Stanford would really benefit from having a branch here in New York City, and we would love to have them.”
The mayor said he spoke with Mr. Hennessy, and “he wished us well. I wished him well.”
No university was ever a front-runner, despite media reports suggesting Stanford was the favorite, Mr. Bloomberg said. “And I think in the end,” he said, “the proposal that wanted it the most and that fit the best with what New York is all about, what opportunities there are to grow here, was the winner.”