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April 07, 2008, 09:39 AM ET
Shop Talk: Brooklyn Gambit for New York U.?
Location, location: Does New York University have designs on some choice Brooklyn real estate? That’s how the Brooklyn Downtown Star interprets the planned merger of NYU and Polytechnic University, a 3,300-student engineering institution with a mixed financial track record but with deeds to property that some alumni say could be worth as much as $500-million. The newspaper notes that Poly holds air rights that could permit “significant high-rise construction” — which could add at least 800,000 square feet to its campus. Meanwhile, NYU is cramped in Greenwich Village. Poly’s board approved the merger last month, and NYU’s board has also signed off on it, but it still needs the blessing of state regulators.
Surge schedule: Some fortunate institutions keep a spare building around that they can use as swing or surge space, housing departments whose regular quarters are being renovated. But colleges that can’t afford such a luxury face challenges when renovations begin. At the State University of New York at New Paltz, for instance, a three-year renovation of Old Main will take 18 classrooms off line — about a fifth of the undergraduate capacity. With no extra space to turn to, the university will try reconfiguring its schedule instead, according to The New Paltz Oracle. To get more use out of existing space, the university will begin classes earlier (8 a.m.) and end them later (10:05 p.m.), and what had been 15-minute class-change breaks will be reduced to 10 minutes. The plan also moves twice-a-week classes to Monday-Thursday or Tuesday-Friday schedules, with once-a-week classes meeting Wednesdays.
Briefly: At Butler County Community College, construction is about to begin on a $6.2-million, 34,500-square-foot student center, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. The building was designed by Burt, Hill. … The University of Idaho’s Tudor-inspired Administration Building is celebrating its centennial, according the the Associated Press. … The Pasadena Star-News applauds Fuller Seminary for making possible — with patience and some $200,000 in subsidies — a plan that will save the only apartment building designed by Greene and Greene, the celebrated California arts-and-crafts architects. The stucco building bears little resemblance to the houses that made the Greene brothers famous — including Thorsen House, in Berkeley — but nevertheless the whole building will be moved to a new site away from the seminary, which is in the midst of what the newspaper calls “a massive campus construction project.”
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