The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey says it hit a $1-billion milestone today for direct contracts to minority- and women-owned firms for work on the World Trade Center during the last five years. The authority says it has awarded about 200 minority and women-owned businesses close to 500 WTC contracts, generating 2,417 construction, architectural and engineering jobs. Photo by Joe Woolhead The authority credits its staff from the World Trade Center Construction, Office of Business Diversity and Civil Rights and Procurement departments for ensuring that each WTC contract met its goal of minority and women-owned (M/WBE) enterprise
New York University will present a plan to add 3.1 acres of publicly accessible open space in Greenwich Village, at Community Board Two's Parks, Recreation and Open Space Committee meeting tonight. The plan is under the university's NYU Core strategy, part of the university’s 20-year, city-wide plan for growth dubbed NYU 2031: NYU in NYC. Rendering Courtesy of NYU The university's plan calls for the addition of 40,000 sq ft of public parkland, totaling more than four acres to be used by the university community and the neighborhood. It also includes landscape improvements to the university-owned streets bordered by West
New York City released details on Monday of its financial pre-development arrangement with Cornell University that allows the university to jumpstart its $2-billion-plus applied sciences campus on Roosevelt Island. Under the deal, Cornell’s first deadline is Jan. 17 for payment of a $5 million pre-development deposit and a $5 million security deposit. The university’s obligations include submission of its Uniform Land Use Review Procedure application by Nov. 10, or it must pay a penalty fee of $1,000 a day for the first two months, increasing by an additional $1,000 a day every two months after that. The university must also
Thornton Tomasetti has acquired Portland, Maine-based Fore Solutions, a seven-employee, green building consulting firm, for an undisclosed sum. The acquired firm will become Thornton Tomasettis’ new Building Sustainability practice, which will expand the engineering firm’s footprint in the green building sector. Photo Courtesy of Thornton Tomasetti The acquisition enables Thornton Tomasetti to “address the sustainability requirements for any client and any project of any scale,” says Joseph Burns, Thornton Tomasetti managing principal. About half of new construction nationwide is expected to incorporate some measure of sustainability by 2015, the firm says.“This is a dramatic expansion of our commitment to sustainability
Construction has commenced on a new $350-million Bronx campus for the New York State Office of Mental Health, the Bronx Psychiatric Center, and the Dormitory Authority of the State of New York. The new campus will be located at 1500 Waters Place, between Waters Place and the Hutchinson River Parkway. Rendering Courtesy of the Spector Group Designed by New York-based Spector Group, the master plan calls for a campus that will include three outpatient buildings, a central services building, a central utility plant, and an adult and children’s facility located on 50-plus acres. Plans also call for the preservation of
Area architects may not have had to claw their way in but they recently put their design and engineering skills to the test on an animal-rescue mission to design warm, weatherproof, portable and safe shelters for New York City’s stray cats. The designers volunteered their time and resources to design and build the shelters for the second annual Architects for Animals competition, part of the non-profit Mayor’s Alliance for New York City’s Animals. There are more than 10,000 stray cats in New York City, says Co Adaptive Architecture, a Brooklyn-based design firm that supports socially and environmentally beneficial work for
Cornell University and its partner, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, have won New York City's competition to build a $2-billion-plus applied sciences campus on Roosevelt Island, Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced December 19. The partnership team beat out seven other bidders for the mayor’s Applied Sciences NYC initiative, launched last winter, which aims to build or expand a state-of-the-art engineering and applied sciences campus in the city. Rendering Courtesy of Cornell University The announcement follows Cornell’s news last week of a $350-million donation made to support the project. Cornell did not initially release the source of the donation, however, it recently confirmed
Area architects may not have had to claw their way in but they recently put their design and engineering skills to the test on an animal-rescue mission to design warm, weatherproof, portable and safe shelters for New York City’s stray cats. The designers volunteered their time and resources to design and build the shelters for the second annual Architects for Animals competition, part of the non-profit Mayor’s Alliance for New York City’s Animals. There are more than 10,000 stray cats in New York City, says Co Adaptive Architecture, a Brooklyn-based design firm that supports socially and environmentally beneficial work for
The number of New York City white- and blue-collar men and women in the construction industry fell 3.8% last year to 224,500, according to recently published New York Building Congress analysis of the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2010 American Community Survey. The construction trades accounted for 165,300 of these positions, down 4.7% from 2009. Image: iStock Photo Both union and non-union labor are included in the study. The data includes both union and non-union labor, as well as management positions, architects, engineers, office support and other service workers connected to the construction industry. Because the survey is self-reported by individuals instead
The Atlantic Philanthropies has been revealed as the mystery donor of $350 million for Cornell University’s newly won engineering and applied sciences project on New York City’s Roosevelt Island. The gift will be made as part of Atlantic’s Founding Chairman program, a series of grants proposed by its founding chairman, Charles F. Feeney. The gift is the largest contribution in the university’s history and one of the largest in the history of American higher educations, says Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s office. Cornell and its partner, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, won the bid yesterday to build a $2-million-plus campus slated for completion