Plans for NYU Brooklyn Campus Remain Alive

Mayor Bloomberg may have declared Cornell University victorious in the city’s Applied Sciences Initiative yesterday, but supporters of NYU’s competing Downtown Brooklyn proposal continue to hope that their project will one day come to fruition, reports the Brooklyn Eagle.

At a press conference announcing plans for the new Cornell science campus on Roosevelt Island, the Mayor said that “we’re still negotiating with some of the other institutions, and we’ll see what happens with them.”

NYU President John Sexton followed up with his own statement, saying that the school is “enthusiastically continuing our talks with the city on establishing a new applied sciences institute in Brooklyn.”

The proposed campus would be called the NYU Center for Urban Science and Progress, and would be housed in a renovated 370 Jay Street (the former MTA headquarters). NYU pitches the Center as a place where “engineers can work to solve urban, global problems like traffic, pollution, and energy conservation."

Two local advocacy groups—the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership and the DUMBO Business Improvement District—have launched a joint ad campaign in support of the project.

In an Op-Ed in yesterday’s Business Insider, writer Charlie O’Donnell argues that the campus would strengthen Brookyln's burgeoning tech sector. He asks, rhetorically:

“If you were to place a school in a strategic location to help drive innovation in NYC over the next 50 years, where would you put it?  Roosevelt Island or Downtown Brooklyn?”

What do you think?