NEW YORK CITY-Furthering its aim of diversifying the local economy with science and technology sectors, the Bloomberg administration now has a bumper crop of possible candidates to sift through for a plan to develop and operate a new applied science and engineering research campus here. A total of 18 submissions, including seven from overseas, came in response to the request for expressions of interest issued by the city this past December. The city plans to issue an RFP by this summer and make a final choice by year’s end, according to a release.

For New York City, Mayor Michael Bloomberg says in a statement, “it’s an opportunity to increase dramatically our potential for economic growth—a game-changer for our economy. The day when a new campus opens its doors is still far down the road, but the quality of the initial responses is an incredibly promising sign that it can and will become a reality.” Adds Robert Steel, deputy mayor for economic development, “Many of the world’s leading tech companies grew out of top applied science programs, and we want the next generation of companies and jobs to start up here in New York.”

Although individual academic institutions including Stanford University, the University of Chicago and locally based Cooper Union threw their hats into the ring, four of the submissions were joint ventures. They included a partnership of Carnegie Mellon University and Steiner Studios; a joint submission by Columbia University and the City University of New York; a consortium including New York University, Carnegie Mellon, CUNY, the University of Toronto and IBM; and a partnership of the New York Genome Center, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Columbia University Medical Center, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, NYU, Rockefeller University and the Jackson Laboratory.

The responses contained proposals for hundreds of millions of dollars in private investment, with the potential to boost the number of applied sciences and engineering graduate students based here, according to a release. Several of the plans feature wet or dry labs as well as space for teaching, housing and recreation.

The Bloomberg administration has identified four possible city-owned locations for the campus, including Brooklyn Navy Yard, Roosevelt Island in Manhattan, Governor’s Island and Farm Colony on Staten Island. Privately owned sites are also a possibility.

Symbolically, when Steel announced the city’s interest in developing an applied sciences campus this past December, he did so at Google’s 500,000-square-foot offices at 111 Eighth Ave. The tech giant subsequently closed on its $1.8-billion purchase of the entire building.