The City University of New York Law School announced plans to make a $155 million campus move from it’s current home — a former junior high school in Flushing, Queens — in favor of a sleeker building in Long Island City, Queens.
The building, completed by Citigroup in 2007, is selling six floors of the building to CUNY for approximately $600 per square foot.
Dean Michelle Anderson said the educational and social justice mission of CUNY will be greatly enhanced by the new location at 2 Court Square in Long Island City.
“The site is at the crossroads of more than a dozen subway and bus lines,” she said in a statement. “Many students cannot attend CUNY Law because they cannot afford a car or the time associated with public transportation to and from the current site. By moving to a central transportation hub, we can begin a part-time program, which will attract students who are not in a position to pursue a law degree full-time.”
The 2 Court Square site is practically new (having been completed in 2007), practically unused, and built at a LEED Gold-certified standard, according to Anderson.
“The purchase of 2 Court Square is the best kind of recycling,” she said. “It repurposes corporate space and turns it into public interest space. By buying this building, we are serving the greater good by using a formerly commercial space to educate the next generation of public interest lawyers.
“The heart of CUNY Law is not the bricks and mortar of our current location, a retrofitted junior high school,” she continued. “It is the innovative and progressive work we do in our clinics and classrooms, in numerous student activities, in our Pipeline to Justice Program and in our Community Legal Resource Network. We are our work and our commitments and we bring our work and our commitments with us to 2 Court Square.”
The move to Court Square is expected in time for the start of Fall 2011 classes. The Queens College School of Education will move into the Flushing building currently occupied by the Law School and adjacent to the college campus.
