PURE GOLD: NYU Expansion

A cynical Andrew Berman, Executive Director of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, believes the University has adequately listened to the community’s gripes however largely "ignored that feedback."

 

You can go back over half a century and find that the University’s actions have often left the community drawing the short straw. One would like to feel NYU is now serious about relations with the community, but there remains a deep skepticism about its commitment to cooperation.

 

The problems go back a long way. Former Councilwoman Carol Greitzer reminds us that NYU promised to contribute an elementary school to the community many years ago but never delivered, and now makes the same promise in its ambitious 25-year plan.

 

Then came the Coles Sports Center in the late ‘70’s and early '80's. In exchange for Community Board Two support, NYU promised to replace a children’s recreation center, which had been occupied by Coles. It placed the recreation area on the Coles roof, which succumbed to the summer heat. In addition, the University refused to let youngsters reach the roof through the center, requiring them to use an outdoor staircase. They also reneged on an earlier promise to grant Village membership during the week, but confined community use to the weekends.

 

NYU did build a dog run at Mercer and Houston as they had agreed to, but their new plans will remove it from the super-block. It will be re-built somewhere in the Village area, NYU indicates, but the university can’t say when or where.

 

During the last quarter of the last century, NYU removed 60 long-term families from   Washington Square Village, indicating that the university needed the apartments for its own people. When Third Street was renovated to build the law school annex and another dorm for new students, some artists and elderly residents were also moved out to make room for NYU’s plan of progress.

 

No report would be complete without mention of NYU’s construction decisions south of Washington Square Park. In the early '70's, the boxlike Bobst Library, out of proportion with surrounding structures and with strong community opposition, was built just south of the park. Then in this century came Kimmel, replacing a student center, and drawing the same fire from the community. Berman's group argued that the proposed building "would be too large, towering over the park and the nearby South Village which   consisted nearly exclusively of buildings of five or six stories” and the new building "would cast a long shadow from the south side of the park, limiting the park’s sunlight and connection to the surrounding neighborhood."

 

Insult on injury to the community was that neither Bobst nor Kimmel had to be so large, each trapping huge amounts of unproductive air. At Bobst, there is the atrium, which may be dramatic, but not a sensible use of space. As for Kimmel, zoning maven Doris Diether once said the entrance reminded her of the entrance to the Metropolitan Opera.

 

More recently, and on a smaller scale, NYU built it science lab on Waverly at a location it owned. Many in the community asked that the building be limited in height to permit sunlight to residents living to the north. NYU reviewed the situation and came back to announce it needed two more floors at the lab.

 

If NYU Senior Vice-president Lynne Brown wishes to convince the community that NYU really wanted to win Village support she would begin with the super block, bordered by Bleecker, Houston, LaGuardia and Mercer. For several years residents on the super-block, preservationists, Village traditionalists, community activists and political leaders have held rallies and petitioned the University not to place a fourth tower on the sight. The University has hinted loudly that it would build such a tower over the one-story Martin Williams supermarket at the northwest corner of the super block. The community has asked that the super-block be land marked as is. To date, the University has stuck to its guns.

 

NYU’s insistence on being the end-all in educational achievement will lead to a student population of over 46,000.  People joke in the community that the Village has now become an appendage of an NYU historic district. People currently living in NYU-owned buildings are nervous about future residency.  Residents on Washington Place   reflect this uncertainty.

 

Using its Community Facility bonus, which can double the FAR (floor area ratio) granted on commercial realtors and out-of-proportion dorms like the NYU dorms on Third Avenue, might be replicated to house the additional students drawn to NYU's educational empire. The University might now want to explain its future policy on dorm construction.

 

Even today, the University is licking its wounds after failing to hold onto or acquire two very large buildings in the Village area.  It had purchased One Fifth Avenue and was interested in buying the Fifth Ave. Hotel at Fifth and 9th St. But its financial condition at that time forced the sale of One Fifth Ave. and shelved the purchase of the Fifth Ave Hotel, both of which would be very useful in the new growth plan.

 

The University’s current addiction to bigger and greater may not be set in stone, but Brown remains optimistic contending, "consultation trumps rancor." She wears two hats— the powerful NYU executive and the devoted Village resident.

 

Can she wear both of them?