Senior Center Could Be Coming to Purchase After Approval from Albany

After years of frustration, SUNY Purchase could soon begin development of an on-campus senior living center that, supporters say, would offer a unique cultural experience for residents and students.

The Senate and Assembly last week passed a bill that would allow Purchase to lease about 40 acres of land for the project, which was first proposed in 2004. Since then, the proposal has gone through various iterations and met opposition from some lawmakers, but a recent push to allow private development on public campuses helped push it over the top.

There are few details on exactly how the center would take shape, but Purchase President Tom Schwarz said it would be a boon for the college by establishing a built-in audience for its many cultural events. The seniors who live at the center, Schwarz said, would likely become members of the school's museum and performing arts center.

"We live in the shadow of New York City and its world-class entertainment, so it's important for us to attract an audience for our students," he said. "You can't be an actor without an audience."

He ticked off a number of other ways it could be academically beneficial, including providing a control group for researchers who study the psychology of aging and "volunteer grandparents" to staff the school's childcare center.

Residents of the center, meanwhile, would have the opportunity to take classes and interact with the campus community.

SUNY Purchase sits atop some of the most valuable land in the area. Schwarz estimated the cost of the project at somewhere between $100 million and $300 million.

The bill also requires 75 percent of the revenue from the center to be steered toward tuition assistance for Purchase students. The remaining 25 percent would be used for staff salaries and other administrative costs.

The center would be run by the Purchase College Advancement Corporation, a nonprofit group controlled by the college. Twenty percent of the units at the center would be reserved for low-income seniors, with three-quarters of those units reserved for people who already live in Westchester.

Sen. Suzi Oppenheimer (D-Port Chester), who has carried the bill in her chamber for years, said the affordable housing component was a "sweetener" that did not make or break the bill's passage. She said a recent shift in thinking about public-private partnerships was key to pushing the measure through.

"There had been a philosophic concern about using state-owned land for commercial purposes," she said, "but the thinking has changed along with the economic pressures put on higher education."

That new thinking in Albany has been embodied by a recent initiative, called SUNY 2020, that will see SUNY's four university centers -- Albany, Binghamton, Buffalo and Stony Brook -- reel in $35 million grants for economic development projects. SUNY 2020 has been spearheaded by Gov. Andrew Cuomo, and also features a proposal to allow the four university centers to increase tuition by $300 a year over the next five years.

"We are building these schools into America's leading institutions of research and innovation, while also creating jobs for New Yorkers and improving our state's economic competitiveness," Cuomo said earlier this month.

Schwarz said that barring SUNY schools from partnering with private developers makes bad economic sense, and puts the schools at a disadvantage with private colleges.

"Private schools can do whatever they want with their land, even though they also receive state subsidies for tuition assistance and tax exemptions," he said.

The Purchase bill, which was carried in the Assembly by Amy Paulin (D-Scarsdale), still needs to be signed by Cuomo, whose office does not comment on pending bills. Schwarz said he's "hopeful," but a previous veto by former Gov. David Paterson has made him cautious.

"I'm not opening the champagne yet," he said.