NYU's New School Used To Have A Special Money Train Station, And Other Fun Facts

This morning Mayor Bloomberg's office gleefully announced that, with its new Center for Urban Sciences and Progress (CUSP), NYU would be leading the charge to bring a second high-tech campus to the city in addition to Cornell's forthcoming school on Roosevelt Island. This afternoon we stopped by the Mayor's press conference at NYU-Poly in Downtown Brooklyn, across from the site of the new school at 370 Jay Street, for all the back patting, self-congratulations and occasionally interesting tidbits.

The whole event was pretty routine and pretty much mirrored the press release (too dry for you? You can get a near transcript from NYU Local's Zoe Schlanger's twitter, or watch the video here), but that doesn't mean there weren't a few interesting things to note. So let's just cut to the chase:

• If Bloomberg was correct in saying "you can always tell whether something is important by how many people want to participate in the announcement," then boy howdy was this important. Everyone and their brother wanted to claim a bit of this story.


• The city isn't necessarily done adding these high-tech campuses. In fact, it is still in active discussions with both Carnegie-Mellon (which is a partner in CUSP) and Columbia about their proposals for new schools in other parts of the city.


• Marty Markowitz's enthusiasm for his borough knows no bounds. While reporters were curious about the city essentially giving land away to NYU (a concern Bloomberg swatted away like a pesky fly citing its relatively low endowment), Marty wants more, more, more. He half-jokingly made a push for NYU to move the Tisch School of the Arts to the borough (something we're sure many East Villagers would be fine with).


• The city is making lots of big guesses on this one: They predict that the school should generate $5.5 billion in overall economic activity over the next three decades, along with $597 million in total tax revenue. Not to mention thousands of jobs. Predict seems to be the key word here.


• Since 370 Jay needs lots of work to be ready for NYU and because the school wants to get going now, it doesn't expect to teach students in the building until September 2017. In the interim they plan to rent 60,000 square feet of space from Metrotech—which is why Bruce Ratner of ForestCity Ratner was in the audience, we presume.


• When we asked NYU's president John Sexton how this new school would change NYU's 2031 plan he told us in no uncertain terms that it wouldn't, as outer borough expansion was already in the cards for the school.


• When Sexton went out of his way to praise "the spectacular Speaker of this City Council" Christine Quinn, Marty Markowitz visibly rolled his eyes before turning back to his standard jovial smile.


• While CUSP is most definitely an NYU school, they are pushing the idea that it is a consortium (made of City University of New York, Carnegie Mellon University, University of Toronto, University of Warwick, and Indian Institute of Technology Bombay) and are very proud of the fact that three of its members are international institutions.


• MTA's NYCT President Tom Prendergast gives good history. In talking about the history of 370 Jay Street Prendergast talked about the 12 years he spent working there in the 80s, calling it "bittersweet" to see the former "centerpiece of New York transit" go. Take it away, Prendergast:

  "Originally built in 1950 for the New York City Board of Transportation, the predecessor agency for New York City Transit, when NYCT was born in 1953 it became our longterm headquarters. Back then before Metrotech was around only the U.S. Treasury handled more cash than the NYCT did on a daily basis. And there was also a train platform right in the basement of 370 Jay Street where Money Trains rolled up and made deposits on a nightly basis for all the people who were buying tokens at that time."

Prendergast also had the best joke of the day when, after talking to about the old station, he turned to NYU's president and apologized because, "those money trains are no longer running." Which is fine, we'd guess, since the city is looking to give $15 million in credits and benefits to NYU as part of their agreement.