Mercy College recently announced that their Manhattan campus is set to undergo an expansion. At the start of the fall 2019 semester the Manhattan Campus will unveil a more enhanced look with more updated learning spaces and more academic offerings. The expansion of the campus will see Mercy make around a$ 9.9 million dollar capital investment to further enhance the school for current and incoming students.

During this year, Mercy was presented with the opportunity to expand the campus. School officials believe that this decision will help Mercy College strengthen their presence in the Herald Square and Manhattan region.

The Vice President of Mercy College Manhattan Campus, Brian L. Johnson believes this is a great opportunity for Mercy.

“I think the Board of Trustees, President Hall and our senior staff officers had a unique opportunity to expand the campus there,” Johnson said. “An opportunity arose where the building that we were housed in would allow us to have more space at a very reasonable or close to what we were currently paying for in terms of leasing there. With that additional space, we felt like it was a great opportunity to really put a stamp in the Manhattan vicinity. This is great for the future of the college as a whole.”

The college will still be in the same building. However, the entrance to the college will now be on the side facing Macy’s. Currently on the Manhattan Campus, classes are on the sixth and seventh floor. Beginning during the Fall 2019 semester, students will now start having classes on the third and fourth floor. The expansion will see the Manhattan campus expand to three floors that will total 95,370 square feet. On the third floor, the classrooms will be larger, and the academic space will total 66,352 square feet. New technology will be added to the campus similarly to what is currently at the Dobbs Ferry Campus.

“When people talk about the expansion, its largely the student spaces being increased,” Johnson said. “It’s not the office spaces, there will be more classrooms but its largely going to be the student public spaces, so that you don’t have one little carved out area. There also will be some form of venue by which we will be able to deliver food services.”

In Fall 2020, the seventh floor of the Manhattan campus will now be the dormitory space floor. The dormitory space will have about 133 beds. There will be a total of 29,018 square feet that will be committed to residential living.

“You’re in the city so its going to pattern after most dormitory living arrangements,” Johnson said. “The dorms will be similar to Pace University. “We haven’t exactly figured out what that would look like because it might be a mix of transfer students, first year students, graduate students, adults. So, we don’t quite know yet, it’s really going to be driven by demand as to who occupies it.”

A direct result of the expansion has allowed the Manhattan campus to have new academic offerings. There are about eight different kinds of programs. Students will be able to get academic offerings that are currently at the Dobbs Ferry campus now at Manhattan. Mercy is currently going through the process of registering the new programs that will be available to the students at the Manhattan campus. Currently, the college cannot advertise the new programs that will be coming to the Manhattan campus, so they have listed the programs as pathways to a certain degree on their website. Faculty members are working with New York state to get them registered.

As part of the expansion, there will also be a new lecture hall. The hall will seat about 100 students. It will be kind of like a large auditorium that will allow students to probably watch a movie in there and student life placed a request to Mercy officials about that.

Mercy believes that expanding the campus will raise the enrollment at the Manhattan and all the other campuses.

“We have very ambitious goals,” Johnson said. “We want to get at least 300 more students at the Manhattan campus. Right now, we are right about 700 students at Manhattan. We definitely want to be hovering generally around 1,100 students. But ultimately we think we can get up to 2,600 students there.”

Mercy has completed the signing and renovations are going to soon start taking place. To announce the expansion plan, Mercy has launched a marketing campaign to spread the news to everyone. As part of the advertisement the college came up with the slogan “MercyManhattan- The Ultimate Location To Reach Your Destination.” The new marketing campaign will be advertised on buses, billboards, subways, newsstands, phone kiosks, internet radio and social media.

All the leaders that are overseeing the expansion of the Manhattan Campus is very excited about the direction the campus is going in.

“From the Board of Trustees, President, senior staff officers, all midlevel managers,” Johnson said. It’s a real opportunity because of course when you are in Manhattan it offers a different world. Having the opportunity to study Manhattan is just obviously tremendous.”