Cornell Master Plan

Welcome to the website of the Cornell Master Plan for the Ithaca Campus. 

In 2005, with new development on the campus increasingly constrained, Cornell determined it needed a vision and strategy for the best use of the university’s lands, both within and beyond the current academic core. After two years of intense work, a new master plan for the Ithaca campus (hereafter referred to as the campus master plan) has been completed and adopted by University’s Board of Trustees. The campus master plan provides the university with an integrated framework to guide its long range physical development over a 30 – 60 year time frame. Driven by academic planning priorities, the master plan provides a set of guidelines for decisions about where to locate the university’s research, teaching, residential and recreational priorities and programs; it also offers a campus-wide frame of reference for the university’s current capital plan; and links local and precinct plan goals to the broader plan.

The CMP also draws upon previous physical planning efforts, including the 1989 campus plan and precinct plans, as well as the Comprehensive Policies for the Physical Planning and Design for the Ithaca Campus, from 1989 and 1972.