just thought you might like to know.

Posted on the Cooper Union website is a plan to "modernize" academic facilities and add a total of about 300,000 sq. feet of commercial-use space, and about 30,000 sq. feet of street-level retail space, all in the name of creating revenue. As usual, there is no user-friendly description of the plan on the CU site, and some of the detail files start mid-sentence so I'm sure they aren't publishing the entire document, so I've taken a look and I offer the highlights here.

This program would entail the demolition of the current Nerken Engineering Building and the Abram S Hewitt Building.

Also on the agenda: Demapping and related disposition of Taras Shevchenko Place (also known as Piss Alley, or a great place to park if you keep Febreze in the car).

Phase 1 will be the demolition of the Hewitt Building, and the construction of a new 9-story academic facility in its place. Phase 2 is relocation of academic programs to the new building, demolition of the Engineering Building, and the development of commercial space on the former site of the Engineering Building, with some academic space (4 of 15 floors to be used for academic purposes, 1 one those academic floors to be partially subterranean).

Construction is planned from 2003 to 2006.