CUNY Master Plan 2012-2016

THE CUNY MASTER PLAN 2012-2016
currently occupied by John Jay College’s North Hall. John Jay is vacating the building in early 2012
when its new 630,000-square-foot facility, located between 10th and 11th Avenues and 58th/59th
Streets, is completed. One Amsterdam Avenue has approximately 830,000 square feet of air rights
that can be divided to create a 400,000 square foot home for NCC and allow for the sale of 430,000
square feet to a developer. As part of the sale, the developer will be required to build, at minimum,
the core and shell of the NCC facility. The future 400,000-square-foot building will allow NCC to
grow its enrollments to 3,000-5,000 students. Solicitation for a developer will be disseminated in
early 2012, with selection of a development partner expected in spring 2012. Construction will commence
as quickly as negotiation and funding allow.
CUNY is also exploring options for a public/private partnership with Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer
Center that includes the relocation of Hunter College’s health science programs from the Brookdale
campus at East 23rd Street to East 73rd Street, closer to the main campus. The new facility will also provide
space for research and instruction for science programs currently located in outdated, undersized
space on the main campus. This project is an opportunity for Hunter College to expand its science facilities
resources and reduce the travel distance for students and faculty working in the sciences.
The fourth and final initiative focuses on improvements in the area of facilities planning and implementation.
These can be categorized generally, within two areas: master plans and innovative procurement
approaches.
Consideration for capital projects on a campus begins with the college’s facilities master plan. In 10-
year cycles, and as programmatic changes occur or real estate opportunities arise, CUNY reviews and
revises the facilities master plan of each campus. Since 2007, the facilities master plans for five campuses—Baruch,
Brooklyn, Staten Island and York Colleges, and LaGuardia Community College—have
been updated and approved by the Board of Trustees. The Hostos Community College facilities master
plan update is currently under way; another seven colleges—City, Hunter, Medgar Evers, New York College
of Technology, BMCC, Kingsborough, and Queensborough Community Colleges—are preparing to
undergo facilities master plan updates.
CUNY and its consultants begin each of these plans with a space-needs analysis calculated by applying
current CUNY space guidelines, approved by the state Board of Regents in 1972, to existing and projected
enrollments. Because CUNY and higher education have undergone many changes over the last 40 years,
benchmarking against other public urban institutions has also been factored into these analyses. However,
CUNY cannot continue working with outdated metrics; therefore a project to develop new space
guidelines for the University began in July 2011. The new guidelines will promote 21st-century learning
and all that it entails, including:
• The use of technology throughout the curriculum, research areas, and administrative functions;
• The provision for increasingly active learning environments;
• The building of community through student gathering and study spaces; and,
• The maximization of facilities resources.
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