Roosevelt Island Master Lease Extension
A “conceptual agreement to extend the Roosevelt Island Master Lease” was jointly announced on November 14 by Governor Hochul and Mayor Adams. Subject to approval by the Roosevelt Island Operating Corporation (RIOC), the agreement would extend its control of the island from 2068 to 2078, while also providing greater financial stability for its 12,000 residents and over 100 businesses. A separate agreement will launch a “joint planning effort” in collaboration with RIOC, “oriented around future development on the Island, marking an important step toward ensuring the Island’s long-term stability and future” according to the press release by Governor Hochul’s office. As part of the effort, a planning and community engagement process will be initiated to identify opportunities for “potential housing, new infrastructure and amenities to serve the Island, and other community priorities,” while also addressing the NYC Health + Hospitals/Coler campus, a 500-bed skilled nursing facility located on the north side of Roosevelt Island. The outcomes of the planning process will be incorporated into the Master Lease extension, “as well as other amendments to the lease to streamline State, City and RIOC operations.” Past development on the Island led to the construction of the 12-acre Cornell Tech campus on the south end of the Island. Initial visions for a new engineering or expanded applied sciences campus in New York City arose in 2010 with Cornell University and Technion-Israel Institute of Technology selected among 18 submitted proposals to a challenge issued by the city. In 2017 Cornell Tech moved to Roosevelt Island from Google’s New York City building where they had operated since launching in 2012, and the rest is history. Today, Cornell Tech serves as “one of the most technical and environmentally advanced campuses in the world,” and is “home to close to 50 tenure track and nontenured faculty members, approximately 600 master’s students across eight programs, and more than 150 doctoral students in five fields” according to their website.
Source: https://tech.cornell.edu/about/