Donors have contributed just $3,315 to the Rangel Center at City College since the Harlem congressman became enmeshed in scandal last fall.
The center — which critics have derided as a “monument to me” — needs $30 million to renovate a derelict building in Harlem and fulfill its mission to prepare minority students for public-service careers.
But data provided by the college shows Rangel’s pet project has amassed just $6.6 million in pledges, and only $650,000 in cash contributions, since fund-raising began in 2005.
The pledges have dried up completely, and the cash donations slowed to a trickle, since September 2008. That’s when a congressional ethics committee began a far-reaching probe into the lawmaker’s alleged tax dodges, misuse of rent-stabilized apartments, influence-peddling, and soliciting donations for the center on congressional letterhead.
“There have been no additional pledges since that time,” said Mary Lou Edmondson, spokeswoman for City College. “Given the general state of the economy, of course, last year was not an easy year for fund-raising.”
The center has said in the past it has taken in $12 million in donations.
Edmondson could not immediately explain the discrepancy.
Over the past two years, the center has given scholarships to 80 graduate students over three semesters and paid for 10 research assistantships.
It has arranged for internships for 100 students and held policy forums and career fairs, Edmondson said.
But despite such activity, the Rangel Center has virtually no presence on campus. At its temporary quarters in the dean of social sciences’ office on the sixth floor of a student center on Convent Avenue, there are no signs it exists.
On a visit last week, the dean’s office was deserted and neither students nor campus police had any idea where the Rangel Center offices were.
The center is eventually to be housed in a vacant limestone mansion owned by the college at Convent Avenue and 141st Street. A city landmark, the mansion was gutted by fire and has been empty for decades.