New York City began the seven-month uniform land use review procedure (ULURP) today, Oct. 15, for the 12-acre Cornell NYC Tech Center planned for Roosevelt Island. The action initiates the public review phase of Cornell University and Technion-Israel Institute of Technology's updated master plan of their 30-year, $2-billion-plus planned applied sciences project. Cornell has also released new renderings of the 12-acre tech campus that, when completed in 2037, will include up to 2.1 million sq ft of development.

First-phase plans call for breaking ground in 2014 on the first academic building, designed by Thom Mayne and Morphosis Architects. This will be a net-zero energy building due largely to a rooftop photovoltaic canopy "that will generate much of the energy needed to make it one of the largest energy-neutral buildings in the U.S.," Cornell said in a statement.

First-phase completion is set for 2017 and also includes a corporate co-location building, an executive education center with hotel facilities, a faculty and student residential building, and 125,000 sq ft of open public space.

"Just as Cornell Tech will be pioneering new approaches to graduate research and education, our campus won't look like any other university campus that exists today," Daniel Huttenlocher, dean of the tech center, said in a statement. "We are determined to innovate in every aspect of the development, from the way that students, faculty, researchers, industry and the local community are intermingled, to the sustainability of our buildings and their iconic architecture."

Earlier this month, Cornell Tech said it partnered with the U.S. Dept. of Commerce to bring full-time U.S. Patent and Trademark Office personnel to the campus to promote innovation and economic development.

The tech campus is using 22,000 sq ft of space at Google Inc.'s New York headquarters that the tech giant donated for five and a half years while the Roosevelt Island campus is being built.

Last December, the City of New York chose Cornell and Technion to build the campus as part of Mayor Michael Bloomberg's Applied Sciences NYC initiative aimed at making the city more competitive in engineering and applied sciences. Other schools chosen under the mayor's initiative include New York University and NYU-Poly, which are partnering with a consortium of other universities and tech firms, to build the Center for Urban Science and Progress, an engineering and science institute, in Downtown Brooklyn.Cornell Tech Begins Public Review Process.