CM Wong on Hunter College Brookdale campus infrastructure

Thank you, Chair.

Chancellor Rodriguez, thank you for coming today.

I have a question concerning Hunter College.

It says over here, executive budget, CUNY's four-year plan allocates $421.8 million for new school construction of the Hunter College Brookdale campus.

The funds would, this funds two million square feet of modern academic healthcare, life sciences space.

I'm interested in two things, because I hear from students that the experience in the Hunter College building has not been good.

We're talking about water mains and sewer lines that ruptures.

Instead of looking at the new space, is anything being addressed to the current problem?

The current infrastructure, like how can students go to class with the water main or sewer problems that I've been hearing?

Please talk about it.

Thank you for your question, and I'll let our COO address some of that on the capital side with more specificity.

Two things, too.

Clearly, the Hunter main campus requires, and it's part of the conversation that we had before, as to the allocation for critical maintenance to be able to make sure that, A, we get to systems

before they collapse or break down, and that's why we want additional.

funding for critical maintenance, but you were talking about the Brookdale campus where we have also the renovation of the nursing facility too,

and construction was just, did we begin that already for the

In Brookdale?

No, I mean, let me.

Yeah, go ahead.

So let's take the Brookdale property.

As you know, that was part of a large announcement that was made by the previous administration around building sort of a life science facility.

CUNY was going to have its own sort of building that would have.

The nursing school, as the chancellor alluded to, the School of Public Health, and some additional labs.

That project right now, as I understand it, is going to, they're going through the demolition phase of it.

They're getting the, so they can begin the demolition phase of it.

We have now moved out of that facility.

The nursing school is in a really, really wonderful facility at 40 Breckett Street where we have,

was a previous school and I think one of the previous colleges was in there and we retrofitted that facility to accommodate our nursing school.

So our nursing, I mean,

Yeah, nursing school.

So our nursing school is fine.

As part of the...

As I stated earlier, as part of the deferred maintenance and state of good repair, we allocate to colleges various funding.

We focus in on those vital systems that could come offline for a particular college at a time.

The last time you raised the concern of the, and that was a pipe that was frozen, and it was fixed immediately after that, so the information was...

Have been taken care of a while ago.

Like, as you probably know and have heard, our infrastructure is an aging infrastructure.

Most of our buildings, 60% of them are over 50 years old.

And on a five-year capital plan, our need is about 9.5.

$4 billion, and we get about $2 point something billion in a five-year plan.

So the need is higher than what we get, and so we try to really be targeted.

We've done an assessment of all our facilities and really try to provide a real targeted approach.

Obviously, we're here advocating to make sure that you help us get additional funding.

But I'd be happy to, if you have anything at Hunter College, I actually think that facility is one of the facilities that's really well run and they really stay on top of things.

But I'll always, like anything else, things do fall through the cracks.

I would love to hear more about it and be able to do that.

I know our chair of your committee has really been laser focused, and I really do welcome the partnership because we haven't had that partnership before at the council, so that's really welcome.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Chair, I'll save my questions for round two.

Perfect.

Councilmember Lewis, followed by Morano.