BY DUSICA SUE MALESEVIC | The Metropolitan College of New York is moving to the Financial District next year.
The entire Manhattan campus, now at 431 Canal St., will be relocated to 40 Rector St., said Dr. Vinton Thompson, the college’s president. The college also has a Bronx campus.
“In a sense, we’re coming back Downtown — this is where we started out,” Thompson told Community Board 1’s Financial District Committee last month.
Founded in 1964 by Audrey Cohen, the college started as the Women’s Talent Corps in March 1965 and was renamed later after its founder. It got its first funding in 1966 and opened a paraprofessional job training program at 346 Broadway the same year, Thompson said later in an email.
Two years later, the college moved to the Federal Building at 201 Varick, then to 345 Hudson in 1980 and to its current location in 1995, he said.
Last December, the M.C.N.Y. purchased three and a half floors of 40 Rector, a large old office building that is being sold mostly to non-profit organizations, he said.
Built in the early 1920s, 40 Rector was designed by the same architects as Grand Central Terminal, explained Thompson, who lives in Battery Park City and has been president since 2008.
The college will have three floors, the sixth through the eighth, which will house student lounges, classrooms, student services, a large library, various offices and academic areas. It will also have a street level entrance on West St., which the college plans on reopening.
It will also offer a public assembly area, which will be made available to groups for meetings and other events. It can seat 150 people and will have a catering panty, said Thompson.
The interior construction has already begun, he said. The full-scale renovation is expected to be complete by April 2016 and then open for summer session in May.
Thompson said in an email that the college’s lease at its current space was scheduled to run out in 2020, “but a couple of years ago it became evident that to renew at current commercial rates or at even higher future rates would be prohibitive.” The school currently leases from Trinity Church.
The college decided to “pursue the advantages that come with ownership and started a search for suitable condominium opportunities. We settled on 40 Rector based on great access to transportation, the availability of contiguous large floor plates and first floor street frontage, the quality of the building, and adjacency with a wonderful set of organizations that share complementary missions,” he said.
The student population, which is around 1,200, is mostly working adults and commuters. Two thirds of the college’s programming is evenings and Saturdays, he explained.
