Last fall, Dean Glenn Hubbard announced that Columbia Business School will play a major role in Columbia University’s planned campus in the Manhattanville section of West Harlem. The campus would resolve the University’s need for additional space while providing the neighborhood and the city with a vibrant center not only for education and academic research but also for expanded economic opportunity, enriched cultural offerings and enhanced civic life.

The move also offers Columbia Business School a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to realize its potential. Dean Hubbard’s e-mail to the community on November 16 about the significance of this opportunity is excerpted below. To learn more about the full scope of the University’s plans, visit the Manhattanville Web site.

Dear Colleagues:

This week, Columbia University President Lee Bollinger and I announced a move for Columbia Business School, among others, to the University’s proposed Manhattanville campus.

The area of development for the expanded University campus comprises approximately 17 acres (half as large as the entire Morningside campus) and extends roughly from West 125th Street to 133rd Street and from Broadway to 12th Avenue. The University will continue to expand into Manhattanville over the next 25 to 30 years; we expect the new Business School building to be completed in the initial phase, pending necessary approvals, in the next five to seven years.

Manhattanville gives us options unmatched in any alternative proposal. It will provide us with the opportunity to design state-of-the-art facilities that dramatically transform our environment, strengthen our programs and match our status as a premier business education institution. Empowering faculty research through research centers and facilities for collaboration will advance our capacity to generate cutting-edge ideas. And bringing together our talented people and offering ways to connect them with the business resources around us are big plusses.

The new site also puts us on a scale more comparable with our peer institutions: Wharton and Chicago have built exceptional new facilities, and many other schools have plans to expand.

While a new physical space is tremendously important, the new campus is really a part of an overall transformation that calls for other fundamental changes to position us not simply in the context of our competitors but as the preeminent leader in the world of business education.

I look forward to keeping you informed about new developments and invite you to contact me at Manhattanville@gsb.columbia.edu, designed specifically for this issue.

I am looking forward to working with you as this process — and the School — moves forward.

With regards,

Dean Glenn Hubbard