Forget Harvard. Look at Long Island University. And St. Francis College. And Brooklyn Law School.
Brooklyn officials, seeking to stimulate economic development in the borough’s fast-growing Downtown, pointed out yesterday that the area has become a haven for the college crowd.
It’s already home to 57,000 students at such schools as LIU, the Polytechnic Institute of NYU, St. Francis College, Brooklyn Law School, the New York City College of Technology and SUNY Empire State College.
In other words, more students are packed in there than in even Cambridge, Mass., home of Harvard and MIT.
“We haven’t done the best job of engaging these institutions,” admitted Tucker Reed, president of the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership. “We plan to stress the tremendous assets these local institutions are in promoting the area for commercial development.”
The push dovetails with a report issued by Borough President Marty Markowitz showing Downtown added 12,000 private-sector jobs from 2003 to 2010, an 18.4 percent jump.