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A former Queens COVID testing site is now home to a $178.85 million state-of-the-art school campus slated to welcome students on Thursday.
The Queens Innovation Center, located in Woodside, will accommodate students attending four co-located high schools.
They include two new schools — the Motion Picture Technical High School, which focuses on film and television careers, and Northwell School of Health Science, which aims to train students in health care careers. Gotham Tech High School is a three-year-old school that specializes in robotics, and P993Q is a District 75 school that serves students with significant learning challenges.
“This building represents a tangible investment in our communities, one our students and families can see and feel,” New York City schools Chancellor Melissa Aviles-Ramos said during a ribbon-cutting ceremony Wednesday at the Northern Boulevard facility.
The six-story, 3,066-seat facility is the largest New York City School Construction Authority project to date and part of broader citywide efforts to address overcrowding in schools.
It features 94 classrooms, 18 special education classrooms, two speech rooms, a 550-seat auditorium, two cafeterias, a library, gymnasium, dance rooms, a weight room, science labs, music and art rooms, outdoor recreational areas, and more.
Community leaders and elected officials praised the new complex, which houses schools focused on careers in STEM, the arts, and health care.
“This is not just the opening of a building, but the opening of doors to thousands of futures,” said New York City School Construction Authority President and CEO Nina Kubota.
Gotham Tech High School trains students in science and technology, while the Motion Picture Technical High School — created in partnership with the Roybal School of Film and Television Fund — will offer pathways into the film and television industry. Queens residents will receive enrollment priority.
Northwell High School, launched with support from Northwell Health and Bloomberg Philanthropies, will prepare students for public health careers. The Bloomberg funding is part of a $250 million national initiative backing nine other projects.
Located in District 30, the Queens facility also aims to ease overcrowding, a longstanding challenge in the borough, despite an overall downward trend in enrollment citywide — and in the area as well. Across the system, roughly 906,000 students enrolled in city-run schools last year, down from about 1 million five years ago, according to 2024-25 demographic data released on Wednesday by the Education Department. District 30, which has nearly 39,000 students, lost roughly 1,000 students in that time.
Queens is also home to the city’s third-highest share of economically needy students after the Bronx and Brooklyn, and a diverse student body, with enrollment that is 42% Latino, 28% Asian American, 14% Black and 11% white.
“ What we built here is what the students of this community have long deserved. Those kids from Woodside Houses deserve every opportunity to have a quality high school in their neighborhood,” Queens Borough President Donovan Richards said about a nearby public housing complex.
He noted that the borough is adding more classroom seats than any other in the city.
The Queens Innovation Center’s 3,066 seats are among nearly 27,000 created under Mayor Eric Adams’ administration, according to a New York City School Construction Authority press release. In Queens, projects have added 399 seats at P.S. 26; 354 at P.S. 160; 229 at Q509; and 100 at P.S. 182, among other expansions. In its 2025-2029 capital plan, the city vowed to fund an additional 33,417 seats across the five boroughs.
Seyma Bayram is a New York City-based journalist. You can reach her at sbayram@chalkbeat.org.
