With students heading to college in record numbers, local institutions are constructing everything from new dormitories to academic buildings, hoping to attract the best and brightest students and professors. And many of the projects are emphasizing sustainable design.
“The good news is that a number of major institutions [are] poised to move forward with major expansion projects,” said Richard T. Anderson, president of the New York Building Congress. Indeed, a recent report from the group found that despite a slowdown in construction by the government sector, colleges continue to invest in their futures.
The city’s 105 universities and colleges have spent a combined $2 billion on maintenance and new facilities in each year from 2010 to 2012, and are expected to put in another $10 billion through 2017, or an average of $9.5 million each.
Since 2003, the City University of New York’s student population has increased by nearly 50 percent, requiring an expansion. According to CUNY’s Vice Chancellor for Facilities Planning, Construction and Management Iris Weinshall, CUNY’s goal, along with new projects, is to redevelop at least a quarter of its facilities with a Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design (LEED) certification by 2017. As these include many historic and landmark buildings, Weinshall noted, “this is a huge and important task.”
Lehman College’s new Science Hall, in fact, which opened for classes in spring 2013, has a LEED Platinum certification, the top of four levels, from the US Green Building Council.
And Lehman’s LEED Silver four-story School of Social Work is the first of a three-phase “campus within a campus” dedicated to the sciences.
The facility was constructed with $70 million in funding provided by New York State through the CUNY Capital Program. Funding of $1.5 million for the rooftop greenhouse was provided by an allocation from the New York City Council.
Other recent projects, including the CUNY School of Law and the Summit residence hall at Queens College, have Gold certification, while Hunter College’s School of Social Work and Bronx Community College’s North Hall and Library have Silver.
There are also several research facilities in the CUNY construction pipeline, including an advanced research complex on the City College campus in Harlem, and the new College of Staten Island dormitory, which will aim for LEED Gold.
A new building at New York City College of Technology in downtown Brooklyn, on the site of the former Klitgord Building, will seek the Silver rating. This eight-story, 350,000-square-foot vertical campus, designed by Perkins Eastman, is under construction at Jay and Tillary streets. The $406 million project will have lab space for health care and science programs along with a wellness center, a 1,000-seat auditorium and an 800-seat gym. When it opens in 2017, a central courtyard will serve as a gathering space.
In Brooklyn, a private donation by Holocaust survivor Irving Montak has enabled Touro College’s Lander College of Arts & Sciences – Flatbush to purchase and renovate 2002 Ave. J in Brooklyn to create a new annex. The January 2012 purchase from a Yeshivah was made for $3.475 million, city records show.
The Irving Montak Building will have classrooms and faculty offices.
LAS is also creating a new state-of-the-art science lab in the main building, which coincides with an increase in students focused on the health sciences. Renovations are expected to be completed by December 2014.
Columbia University is in the midst of one of the most ambitious projects, which will transform 17 acres just north of its Morningside Heights campus into pedestrian-friendly streets with academic, civic and cultural spaces.
Construction includes the majority of the four blocks from W. 129th to 133rd streets between Broadway and 12th Avenue, and includes the north side of W. 125th and three sites on the east side of Broadway from W. 131st to 134th.
The first phases of development will include the Jerome L. Greene Science Center, the Lenfest Center for the Arts, a new home for the Columbia Business School and an academic conference center.
The Greene building will be a new scientific research and teaching facility that’s being developed thanks to the largest gift in Columbia’s history. It was made by the Dawn M. Greene and the Jerome L. Greene Foundation to honor the late real estate attorney Jerome L. Greene. It will include the Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute, and is scheduled to open in 2015.
Columbia is also creating neighborhood housing.
A 12-story environmentally friendly apartment building is now under construction at 3595 Broadway, on the southwest corner of W. 148th Street. When complete in 2015, the local Meeting with God Church will move into a ground-level space. It will be compliant with Enterprise Green Communities, the first national green building program developed for affordable housing.
The affordable housing units are targeted to area residents being displaced by the new campus.
New York University — which just won a state court Appellate Division decision allowing it to move forward with construction on certain parts of the Greenwich Village campus opponents claimed was parkland — has an ambitious green goal: obtaining LEED Silver certification for all new buildings.
The construction includes an aggressive, 1.9-million-square-foot multi-phase expansion of its facilities, which requires the infilling of current open space and replacement of older structures with new buildings.
Also under construction: a 12-acre campus for the graduate-level Joan & Irwin Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute of Technology on Roosevelt Island, conceived of and greenlighted by the Bloomberg administration. It was named after the Qualcomm co-founder and his wife, who made a gift of $133 million.
The former Coler-Goldwater Hospital is being demolished to make room. In the meantime, Cornell Tech’s first group of students are taking classes in the Google building in Chelsea.
Eventually, the 2 million square feet of space will have 2 acres of open space and house 2,000 students and 280 faculty members. The first academic building, designed by Thom Mayne of Morphosis, should open in 2017, and include a café and terrace facing the campus plaza. It will be open to the public.
The construction boom is also affecting the suburbs. Mercy College in Dobbs Ferry has a 283-room dorm underway to relieve a housing shortage that has required it to rent rooms in area hotels.
Mercy has not committed to obtaining the costly LEED certification, but is working with New York State Energy Research & Development to institute energy-efficient practices, such as installing insulated glazed windows, low-flow plumbing fixtures, using native plantings and ensuring outdoor fixtures are “dark sky” compliant to reduce light pollution yet still create a safe environment for students.
In Garden City, Long Island, Adelphi University has a $74 million Nexus Building and Welcome Center under construction, expected to be completed for the fall 2015 semester.The nearly 100,000-square-foot glass building will have administrative and academic space for both the College of Nursing and Public Health and the Center for Health Innovation.
A two-tier meeting room for 60 will be situated where its two wings come together.
The building will also have classrooms for all students and underground parking for over 200 cars.
“The enrollment has grown tremendously,” said Angelo B. Proto, assistant to the president for Facilities Planning. “The demand was there before, which is why [we came up with] the master plan.”
In the future, a Phase II will be targeted towards the School of Business.
