CUNY Nursing School Stalls On UES As Funding Runs Dry: Report

UPPER EAST SIDE, NY — Plans to construct a new nursing school campus on the Upper East Side have stalled, leaving nothing but a building foundation in the ground after funding for the project dried up, according to reports.

City and state officials are at odds over the funding needs for a planned $300 million Hunter College nursing school on East 74th Street next to the new Memorial Sloan Kettering facility between York Avenue and the FDR, the New York Post reported.

Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer told the Post that the state should pony up the funding, but state officials put the burden on the City University of New York. Gov. Andrew Cuomo's state budget director Robert Mujica told the newspaper that the state has already committed $2.7 billion in capital funding to CUNY in the past eight years and there's currently a $500 million funding gap for the Hunter College project.

On the other hand, Brewer said Cuomo's team "dropped the ball" on the project that was announced nearly seven years ago.

"The governor, for whatever reason, did not allocate the funding for the Hunter College building . . . The new nursing school is desperately needed. It’s crazy. It’s a real mess. It’s a hole in the ground," Brewer told the Post.

Contractors have already laid the foundation for the new nursing school and are currently using the site as a staging area for equipment as work finishes on the David H. Koch Center for Cancer Care next door.

Read the full New York Post article here.

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