Back when Cornell's bid to bring a high-tech campus to Roosevelt Island was approved by the City the school said that it'd be holding classes in the city (if not on Roosevelt Island) ASAP. And thanks to a very generous gift from Google, that really will happen. Despite its longstanding ties to Stanford, internet behemoth Google today announced it is giving the school 22,000-square-feet of space on an upper floor of its NYC headquarters, rent free, for the next five-and-a-half years.
Cornell has really lucked out on the gift department for this new school. First off, there is the massive city funding that got the project started in the first place. Then there is the fact that much of the new campus, which is expected to begin hosting students in 2017, is being funded thanks to a $350 million donation and now Google is—apparently without pressure from the city—helping the school get rolling here before the new campus is built.
“I’m passionate about breaking ground in science and engineering because technology has driven many of the advances humankind has made,” said Google CEO Larry Page. “But we still don’t have enough people working in these areas. It’s why I am tremendously pleased that Google is giving Cornell the office space to get their new engineering university up and running in New York City.”
The actual value of the free space isn't entirely clear—the Ivy will, according to City Room, apparently "not treat it as a typical philanthropic donation to the school and so had not placed a value on it."—but it is estimated to be worth as much as $12 million.
