Update on the Chrysler Building

Dear Cooper Union,

I want to inform you of a development today regarding the ground lease that The Cooper Union holds for the Chrysler Building. As many of you know, this has been a long-term asset for Cooper, dating back to 1902.

R&S Chrysler LLC (RFR), ground lessee since 2019, stopped making monthly ground lease payments on the Chrysler Building to The Cooper Union. As a result of their nonpayment, they are in default of the ground lease agreement, and we issued a lease termination notice on Sept. 13, 2024. The ground lease will terminate today, Sept. 27, 2024, and control of the Chrysler Building will transfer to Cooper Union. As the long-term fiduciary of this iconic New York City property, we are engaging a world-class property management firm, Cushman & Wakefield, to ensure a smooth transition for the building and our tenants who will pay their rent directly to Cooper Union.

As fiduciaries of The Cooper Union, we have engaged in good-faith negotiations with RFR to renegotiate the terms of the ground lease to arrive at a mutually favorable solution that would 1) give RFR the ability to invest in the building and 2) benefit The Cooper Union and its generations of students to come.

Importantly, this move does not have an impact on student scholarship levels, nor on the recent announcement that seniors will attend tuition free in each of the next four years. We have built important reserves and surpluses over the last seven years as part of our financial turnaround work and implementation of the Plan to Return to Full-Tuition Scholarships. We planned for a range of scenarios, including this one, and built in guardrails to our financial turnaround plan through fundraising, revenue generation, and expense management to protect against potentially negative events (such as COVID or a lease termination), all while holding tuition flat for six straight years and continuing to raise scholarship levels for students.

We look forward to continuing to steward this important asset.

Malcolm King
Interim President

  • Founded by inventor, industrialist and philanthropist Peter Cooper in 1859, The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art offers education in art, architecture and engineering, as well as courses in the humanities and social sciences.

  • “My feelings, my desires, my hopes, embrace humanity throughout the world,” Peter Cooper proclaimed in a speech in 1853. He looked forward to a time when, “knowledge shall cover the earth as waters cover the great deep.”

  • From its beginnings, Cooper Union was a unique institution, dedicated to founder Peter Cooper's proposition that education is the key not only to personal prosperity but to civic virtue and harmony.

  • Peter Cooper wanted his graduates to acquire the technical mastery and entrepreneurial skills, enrich their intellects and spark their creativity, and develop a sense of social justice that would translate into action.