Monroe County Executive Maggie Brooks has sent out a press release announcing that the county has completed the purchase of Kodak properties on State Street, which will be used for a new Monroe Community College campus.
The press release says that the purchase was completed this afternoon. The county is paying just shy of $3 million for approximately 562,000 square feet of building space, as well as part of a parking lot. It plans to invest a total of $72 million in the purchase and renovation of the property.
The press release says that the county and college are in the process of securing architectural design services and that the college hopes to occupy the campus in 2017.
The County Legislature has already approved $28 million in borrowing for the project. College officials have said that half of the purchase and renovation costs will be covered by the state, as long as the space is used for educational purposes.
The state typically pays half of SUNY system schools’ construction projects. But that doesn’t mean the MCC project will have an easy time collecting that money. Mayor Tom Richards still opposes MCC’s move to State Street. And so does Joe Morelle, the Assembly majority leader. He’s called on SUNY and the governor’s office to do a financial analysis of the college’s plans, which would be unusual.
Morelle and Richards favor a proposal from Winn Development, new owner of the Sibley building. That’s where MCC’s downtown campus is currently located.
This article appears in Jun 26 – Jul 2, 2013.
Well, there’s another 75 million down the drain.
It didn’t seem to me that the community college’s city campus should be removed from its downtown location to a site outside of the inner loop, but it does stand to reason that a college should own its own campus. Apparently all options for ownership were considered and the High Falls district is the best one. I view this move as an increased investment in the city, not as an abandonment of downtown. The lesson here is that it’s up to the community college and its primary financial backer (the county) to decide whether to maintain a city campus and if so, where to locate it.
News coverage of this story really should include photographs of the site and details as to which specific buildings and lots have been purchased. Some visuals will perhaps help Rochester comprehend this more fully & get behind the college’s decision on this.