Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg raised his offer on Tuesday to universities interested in setting up a school of engineering and applied sciences in New York City: along with practically free use of a swath of land, the city will contribute as much as $100 million.
Mr. Bloomberg publicly presented an invitation to universities to bid on the chance to create a campus, either on one of three city-owned properties or elsewhere in the city. Issuing the request for proposals is the latest step officials have taken to try to make New York more competitive with Silicon Valley as a hub for technology-based businesses.
“During the 1980s and ’90s, Silicon Valley — not New York City — became the world’s capital of technology startups, and that is still true today,” Mr. Bloomberg said in a speech at a conference on the city’s future at the Grand Hyatt hotel in Midtown. “But if am right, and if we succeed in this mission, it won’t be true forever.”
City officials say the school could prompt as much as $6 billion in economic activity by creating 30,000 temporary and permanent jobs and, more important, by fostering innovations that could become big businesses. They argue that the city’s financial contribution, which would come from its capital budget over several years, would pay off in increased tax revenue and economic growth.
Mr. Bloomberg said he was encouraged by the “strong response” the city received to a call late last year for schools to express interest in the idea. The city received 18 submissions that involved 27 institutions from around the world — some teamed up to present ideas — and used those ideas to help focus the offer. Among the most enthusiastic bidders were Cornell and Stanford Universities.
In December, the first invitation identified four city-owned properties as potential sites for a new campus: the south end of Roosevelt Island in the East River, part of the Brooklyn Navy Yard, parts of Governors Island in the harbor and the Farm Colony on Staten Island. The Staten Island site has been dropped from consideration because it was not appealing enough to the first respondents, city officials said.
Cornell and Stanford each chose the Goldwater Hospital campus on Roosevelt Island as the place it would want to develop a campus. Stanford said it envisioned an investment of as much as $1 billion in a school that would have about 100 professors and 2,200 graduate students.
At the time, city officials had not indicated how much financial help they were willing to provide. But the mayor said Tuesday that the city would invest “up to $100 million in infrastructure upgrades” in the proposal that is selected.
But Seth W. Pinsky, the president of the city’s Economic Development Corporation, said the less city money a bidder asked for, the better its chances of winning the competition would be.
Cornell has not yet said how much it thinks its proposal would cost, said David J. Skorton, the university’s president. But he said the school’s trustees were “just thrilled” at the prospect of setting up a “revolutionary campus” in the city, which has long been home to its medical school, Weill Cornell Medical College.
“This is going to be a complete campus, not an annex of Ithaca or a way station,” Dr. Skorton said.
Stanford’s president, John L. Hennessy, said that his university would submit a formal proposal. “A Stanford New York campus is a unique opportunity to launch another center of innovation on the East Coast,” Dr. Hennessy said in a statement. “New York will be a dynamic partner, drawing talented people from around the world.”
Some schools based in the city have complained that Mr. Bloomberg has overlooked them in his pursuit of a big-name school from elsewhere. But city officials say that any university with a highly rated school of engineering or applied sciences is welcome to bid, even those like New York University or Columbia University that have their main campuses in Manhattan.
“Universities from around the country, and some from around the world, have expressed interest in our offer,” Mr. Bloomberg said in his speech. “And that’s how it should be, because we are an international city — and a city that believes in free competition.”
The tight schedule for the project indicates that the mayor would like ground to be broken for the school before he leaves office. Bidders face a deadline of Oct. 28 to submit their proposals, and city officials hope to choose a winning bidder by the end of the year.
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