Stanford Pulls Bid for New York Tech Campus

"we’re not exactly chomping at the bit to see New York squander its funding on students who spend their time building Star Wars simulations"<p>So, a New York based venture capitalist booster says that Stanford engineering students are "not tapped into the current tech scene", and ridicules that they know how to built robots.<p>Fascinating.

Fun fact: Stanford President Hennessy is the same Hennessy who with Patterson wrote that great computer architecture book: Computer Organization &#38; Design: The Hardware/Software Interface. Oh, he also co-founded MIPS<p>Although as my first job was doing MIPS related stuff I may be biased about usefulness of the book. Amusingly the first featured 5-star review on Amazon is from John Mashey whom older readers may remember from comp.arch on Usenet.

That's good, I never thought Stanford made sense as a choice for NYC. Don't get me wrong, Stanford is an exceptional school, with great tech credentials, and has spawned a unique startup environment.<p>But the thing that makes the SF area great for startups is the proximity (and thus density) of startups and tech in general. While long-distance networking has come a long way, it's still no replacement. If NYC's goal is to build a stronger tech community, I think they're better off building their own East Coast tech culture vs. trying to import a culture from SF.<p>Disclosure: as a Cornell grad, I'm definitely biased and psyched about it getting more involved in supporting a tech community (a $350M donation didn't hurt either)

Cornell received a $350M gift to build their campus. It looks like Stanford withdrew in response.<p>Source: <a href="http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/16/stanford-drops-bid-to-build-high-tech-campus-in-city/?hp" rel="nofollow">http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/16/stanford-drops-...</a>

The Manhattan Project was so named because of Columbia's involvement. Yet somehow NYC never landed the geek culture, almost as if it is squeezed out by squishier disciplines.<p>Good call Stanford.

Sad. It would be refreshing to get some west-coast culture to NYC.

Personally, I thought it a bit of an odd idea based on the large geographic and cultural distances between Palo Alto and NYC. It just didn't seem like the right ecosystem for a transplant. On the east coast, even Boston would seem better suited from a cultural standpoint - there is much more of a public emphasis on technology.

Surprising, given the amount of time it's taken to get to this point.<p>As a New Yorker myself, I'm not sure what I should think of it. <i>Someone</i> is going to make a campus, be it Cornell or NYU.

It's interesting how schools expand their reach to the other coast. CMU has a SV branch and Wharton has SF.

I really don't see Bloomberg standing on stage announcing a choice with anyone else but Stanford. He would consider it a personal failure and embarrassment. The project is basically dead at it's original scope. Maybe something much smaller will be announced but it will be low key and with a deputy mayor filling in.

Too bad. I thought the Roosevelt Island renderings looked pretty cool.

Maybe now Stanford and MIT can consider a merger ^_~ j/k

Someone offered a $350,000,000 gift to Cornell, at which point Stanford decided to drop out.