[Updated: 12/19, 8:18 a.m.]
First came the surprise: Stanford University, perhaps the front-runner in a competition to build a big, new science-and-engineering campus on free land in New York City, suddenly withdrew on Friday.
Now come the recriminations: Did Stanford pull out because it took on more than it could handle and didn’t want to face an embarrassing loss? Or did New York City pull a bait-and-switch on an unsuspecting partner?
Neither side is saying much publicly. But through intermediaries, both sides are letting it be known that they’re deeply unhappy and puzzled after more than a year of high-stakes lobbying and negotiating over what once loomed as a prestigious opportunity for a front-line research base in one of the world’s showcase cities.
And further questions are bound to be raised now that, according to a city official, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg plans to announce on Monday that Cornell University is the winner of the competition.
In a brief public statement on Friday, Stanford’s president, John L. Hennessy, said the university and the city “could not find a way to realize our mutual goals,” then declined to elaborate.
Over the weekend, sources sympathetic to each side sketched out for The Chronicle largely competing versions of events in the final days before Stanford’s withdrawal.
New York City officials, speaking on condition they not be identified by name, essentially questioned Stanford’s commitment. The New York Times described one such official speaking in especially disparaging terms, saying Stanford “could not or would not keep up.”
Stanford officials regard such comments as political spin, said one person familiar with the university’s position. Stanford was fully committed to its application, the person said, but the city kept backing off of its promises. One especially troublesome failure, the person said, involved the city’s unkept promise to fully assess the extent of contamination from medical waste dumped on the proposed site, at the southern end of Roosevelt Island.
The city instead demanded that Stanford accept full liability for any problems from whatever waste is there, the person said. The city also demanded contract language requiring Stanford to stick with the project even if the city didn’t come up with the $100-million contribution it had been offering, the person said.
A New York City official disputed Stanford’s understanding on each of those key points. The official, who declined to be identified by name, said a study of the proposed site found no contamination, medical or otherwise.
The city also made clear that the $100-million was merely the outside range of what it might provide, not a guarantee, and that universities were expected to compete on the amount they would contribute to the project, the official said.
A Tantalizing Offer
The competition dates to last December, when New York City, hoping to make itself a center for technological innovation along the lines of Boston and Silicon Valley, offered free land and financial assistance to any university willing to build an applied science-and-engineering campus in the city. The city offered five sites, including the Goldwater Hospital Campus on Roosevelt Island, a narrow 147-acre stretch of land between Manhattan and Queens.
Stanford was eager for the opportunity, spending $2-million preparing for what it labeled “Silicon Valley II.” It was among five proposals selected by the city for final consideration among seven applications, and widely considered a front-runner as it entered detailed negotiations on terms.
Then came Friday, when Stanford pulled out and another leading contender, Cornell University, which was also seeking the Roosevelt Island site, announced a $350-million anonymous donation to assist the bid it had made jointly with the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology.
Those sympathetic to the Stanford side questioned the development as suspicious, with Cornell suddenly and mysteriously receiving the largest gift in its history only hours after Stanford’s withdrawal. New York City and Mayor Bloomberg, a billionaire who has aggressively pushed for the project to be under way before his term expires, at the end of 2013, both denied any role in the $350-million donation.
The New York City official also rejected complaints from Stanford supporters that Cornell violated a ban on making such gift announcements during the selection process. Universities were asked only to use discretion when discussing details of their proposals, the city official said.
Stanford supporters suggested a situation in which the city believed both universities were so eager for the project that the city could impose virtually any terms it wanted, and then found a way to sharply bolster the rival Cornell bid after Stanford refused to go along.
Cornell’s president, David J. Skorton, and a university spokesman, Thomas W. Bruce, sidestepped several questions about the dispute, giving no firm indication of whether the university also would accept full liability for any toxic waste that might be found at the Roosevelt Island site or whether it would accept the plan without any guarantee of $100-million in city money.
“Cornell has a winning proposal,” Mr. Bruce said, “and we are working diligently to win the award within the rules” established by the city.
