Construction begins on Snøhetta-designed hotel on Roosevelt Island

Cornell Tech's new campus on Roosevelt Island opened to plenty of fanfare last September, but the $2 billion campus is far from being finished. Construction has officially kicked off on the Graduate Roosevelt Island hotel, a project billing itself as the "premier hotel on Roosevelt Island." (Conveniently, it will also be the only hotel on Roosevelt Island.) It's expected to open in the spring of 2020.

The 18-story, 224-key property will be run by Graduate Hotels, a boutique chain that targets college towns. And the architect is Snøhetta, also behind the adjacent Verizon Executive Education Center. The two connected structures are meant to serve as the "front door" for the campus.

As for the hotel, its "iconic slender profile," as the press release calls it, "marks the entrance to the campus while offering guests unobstructed views of the skyline through floor to ceiling windows."

The interior design will include reference points to both the history of Roosevelt Island and the surrounding campus. It will also hold a full-service restaurant, indoor-outdoor rooftop bar with views toward Manhattan, and 3,000 square feet of flexible meeting and event facilities.

The Cornell Tech campus currently includes three buildings designed by Weiss/Manfredi, Morphosis, and Handel Architects. The hotel and education center will wrap up the first phase of construction. The 12-acre campus will be built in three phases, though the last one isn’t expected to wrap until 2043.

• Cornell Tech’s new NYC campus puts sustainable architecture into practice [Curbed]
• Cornell Tech’s Roosevelt Island campus readies for its September debut [Curbed]
• Cornell Tech unveils hotel and Verizon Executive Education Center [Curbed]