In 2017, the Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management increased its footprint exponentially, adding two stunning new buildings to its iconic flagship, Sage Hall: the Breazzano Family Center for Business Education in Ithaca’s Collegetown and the Tata Innovation Center at Cornell Tech on Roosevelt Island.
Made possible by a $25 million gift from David Breazzano, MBA ’80, this new, state-of-the-art, six-story, 76,000-square-foot classroom and office building in the heart of Ithaca’s Collegetown serves Johnson MBA and executive education students in four large, interactive, tiered classrooms plus a flat-floor, flexible classroom that can be subdivided into two separate classrooms. It accommodates student project teams in 19 breakout rooms and 30 open spaces, all with glass walls overlooking a four-story atrium that is a central gathering spot as well as an elegant venue with superior acoustics designed to accommodate a wide variety of events. Advanced technology links users to the Tata Innovation Center on the Cornell Tech campus and wider world. Floors four through six house more than 200 professional and administrative staff. The dedication of the Breazzano Family Center for Business Education honoring David J. Breazzano, MBA ’80, was held on Oct. 18, 2017.
Johnson has a home on the Cornell Tech campus on Roosevelt Island, where the school is leasing 20,000 square feet of space, including two tiered classrooms, eight breakout rooms, and work space for more than 20 faculty and staff in the Tata Innovation Center at Cornell Tech. Johnson was proud to mark this major milestone in its history on Sept. 13, 2017, at the official dedication of the new Cornell Tech campus. Now the hub for all Johnson programs in New York City in addition to being the home of the Johnson Cornell Tech MBA (formerly housed in Google’s Chelsea office in Manhattan), the Cornell Tech campus brings to life Johnson’s “one college, two campuses” model that seeks to integrate the best of both worlds among the school’s programs in Ithaca and in New York City.
Constructed in 1875 as Sage College for Women and transformed in the 1990s to house Johnson, the reconstructed, 145,000-square-foot building was equipped with high-bandwidth fiber-optics linking every office, classroom, student laboratory, special research area, library, and classroom seat; classrooms wired for two-way distance learning, with cameras, projects, network feeds, and phone lines; and the Parker Center for Investment Research, with its Robert S. Boas Trading Room equipped with live feeds from the world’s principal financial markets and top-notch analytical software. Engineering the construction of a completely new building inside the historic walls began with the erection of an exoskeleton of 45-foot towers employing a system of struts and walers to prop up the wall from the exterior to ensure it would not collapse during construction. Once the exterior had been braced, the interior of the building was detached and demolished, new foundations laid, and a structural steel frame for the new interior built, including a courtyard and atrium to allow flow of natural light. The renovation included cleaning the building’s brickwork, and the resulting, brilliant color was a surprise — even to architectural scholars.