The city and state will transform a CUNY campus in Kips Bay into a “state-of-the-art” health and sciences hub, officials said Thursday. 

Hunter College’s Brookdale Campus, which houses its School of Nursing and School of Health Professions, is set to become a “job and education hub” known as Science Park and Research Campus Kips Bay, Mayor Eric Adams and Gov. Kathy Hochul said at a news conference Thursday morning. 

The $1.6 billion, 1.5 million-square-foot-plus project will rise between East 25th and East 26th streets and First Avenue and the FDR Drive, steps from Bellevue Hospital, NYU Langone’s Science Building and the Alexandria Center for Life Sciences, the two lawmakers said in a press release. 

The campus will house modernized facilities for Hunter College’s School of Nursing and School of Health Professions, the CUNY Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy and the Borough of Manhattan Community College’s health care programs, including a “simulation training center” for medical students, the release said. 

It will also be home to a Bellevue Hospital ambulatory center, a public high school focused on health and sciences, a new forensic pathology center for the city’s Office of Chief Medical Examiner and commercial lab and office space, according to the release. 

A conceptual rendering of the SPARC Kips Bay campus. (Courtesy of the New York City Economic Development Corporation)

“The magnetic and gravitational pull of this hub is going to bring businesses here [from] all over the country, if not the globe,” Adams said at the news conference. “It’s a bridge to the future that will take students of today directly into the economy of tomorrow.”

“We’re going to make sure New York City leads the globe in life science and public health careers,” he added. “The demand that we needed during COVID, the shortage of nurses, to find new inventions, to find the vaccines, we’re now going to have that right here in our city, here at this campus that we are building.”

Funding for the campus will come from both the city and state, with “additional investment from the private sector in life sciences,” the release said. Construction is expected to start in 2026 and wrap up by the end of 2031, the release added. 

(Courtesy of the New York City Economic Development Corporation)

The campus “will give New York’s life sciences sector a major boost, creating thousands of high-paying jobs, investing in education and making New York the place where miracles are made,” Hochul said in a statement. 

“My administration remains laser-focused on saving lives and making New York the home of the transformative fields of the future, and with this project, we will achieve both of these goals at the same time,” she added.