Yet another time I want 5 minutes of my life back from reading a betabeat article...when will I learn. To save the rest of you some time...

TLDR: 'But both city officials and Cornell say it was the school’s superior offering that clinched the deal. “The catalyst was that Cornell was beating them in every single category,” said source close to Cornell, citing the speed of construction, the size of the campus, and the amount of students and faculty it will serve.'

Thanks for your comment. Most of our posts on Betabeat take way less than 5 minutes to read. In fact, I'd peg the bulk of the breaking blog posts on news about the campus at about a minute. This was an investigation into the backstory of how the deal for the $2 billion engineering school that could change New York's economy and tech scene went down. Did Stanford drop out because it was going to lose or is Cornell the second choice?

Sometimes things that take two pages to read are worth it, I'm sorry you didn't find that to be the case in this instance, but what you quoted above comes from Stanford and Cornell. Stanford says otherwise:

"A university source familiar with the negotiations said Stanford’s decision to drop out wasn’t based on any one issue, but rather due to “a whole host of things that held them liable for factors outside of [their] control,” such as big-ticket penalties for missed construction deadlines and the city’s desire “to indemnify themselves for any toxicity” at the Roosevelt Island site. Although a Phase II study was commissioned this year, a full scale analysis of the medical dump under the hospital cannot be done until the building is razed. Should serious hazards be uncovered, the school will be on the hook not only for the clean-up but also potentially for resultant delays.”You had a lot of institutions that wouldn’t even apply because of the terms, and they got even more severe in the negotiation process,” said the source."

That actually doesn't say otherwise. What it said is that Cornell met certain conditions that Stanford didn't. It doesn't at all speak to the quality of the schools, the bidding process, or anything like that. The opposing sides don't actually seem to disagree with what happened, it just wasn't a deal that wasn't worth it to Stanford, while it was to Cornell.

It seems the story is pretty short, and again I think the quote I used summed it up pretty well: Cornell gave the best offer based on what the city wanted. Stanford didn't, and claimed the factors like environmental cleanup were "out of their control," while Cornell's offer dealt with them. You spent the entire first page of the piece reintroducing the issue to an educated audience, and I think the rest of your piece makes it seem like there is a lot more contention and competition between the two schools than there actually is.

Also don't change the title of links when you submit them to HN - it should match the title of the blog post (ie: "Safety School? As Stanford Says ‘See Ya!’ Bloomberg Hops in Bed with Big Red").

Thanks for being here to defend your piece, though. I do appreciate that you are willing to discuss, and I hope you don't take my critique personally.

No, we (Betabeat and I) totally welcome feedback in any form--criticism, questions, concerns, etc. Have at us!

We usually change the headlines from paper to blog and from the blog to Hacker News only because the paper ones tend to be more opaque and literary and it seems like HN readers like it a little more straight-forward, so they know what to expect when they click on it. I've noticed other submissions doing that too, although maybe it's not the norm?

Stanford was taken aback by the unusual penalties in the contract and the negotiating stance of the city. Cornell says it was par for the course, but other NYC institutions agreed with Stanford.

I totally hear you about reintroducing issues people familiar with the backstory are already well-versed with, it's something we wouldn't do in a blog post, but the idea here was a feature that stands on its own, to encapsulates what happened over an unexpectedly tumultuous 72 hours.

Really appreciate the feedback. Always looking to improve.

I thought the article was informative, those clauses in the contract did seem pretty unusual although I agree with them for the city's sake. Good job.

And Cornell is in NY state and probably has more relevant connections with authorities than Stanford...

Yeah, the idea of knowing how to build in NYC was a big plus. There's actually still so many hoops to jump through still: the land use agreements, any remediation of the site, potential community benefits, etc.

Didn't Stanford drop out? How can you beat someone that didn't even compete?

Yeah, they dropped out because they knew Cornell was going to get it and they preferred to quit rather than lose.

From multiple accounts, Stanford didn't have the same passion/funding/flexibility as Cornell in getting the deal done. Stanford is more prestigious, but that's not the only factor obviously - or why even have an open competiton at all?

The question is whether Stanford dropped out because they weren't interested or because they were about to lose to Cornell.

Yes, Stanford dropped out.

"Stanford University has withdrawn its application to the city of New York to construct an applied sciences and engineering campus on Roosevelt Island."

http://news.stanford.edu/news/2011/december/nyc-campus-12161...

This whole thing reeks of failure. Win because you promise more? That sounds like a government project.

"Win because you promise more? That sounds like a government project." Ha, ding ding ding ding ding ding!