NEW YORK CITY-In an effort to address long-range goals for growth as well as community concerns, New York University is seeking a parkland designation for green spaces at the edge of two Washington Square superblocks along LaGuardia Place and Mercer Street as part of its NYU 2031 expansion plan. The university announced late Thursday that the designation would allow NYU to build entirely on its existing footprint with no up-zoning or displacement of tenants while ensuring that the parkland--or DOT strips--remain as open space in perpetuity.
“By re-imagining the two superblocks, we are able to meet our academic space needs in our core Washington Square area over the next two decades and significantly reduce our need to expand our footprint within the neighborhood,” says NYU’s senior vice president Lynne Brown, in a statement.
The parkland designation will be noted on maps within the University’s Uniform Land Use Review Procedure application, which will be revised to include two new buildings located between West 3rd and West Houston streets, and La Guardia Place and Mercer Street. It will be filed with the city’s Department of City Planning in the coming days, NYU says.
If approved under the city’s ULURP process, phase I of construction will involve the development of an 800,000-square-foot “zipper” building with ground floor retail, academic space, student and faculty housing, a below ground gym and hotel space. In addition, NYU acquired land on the corner of Houston and Bleecker streets for $23 million to build a K-8 public school that will be donated to the New York City School Construction Authority, which currently houses a Morton Williams Supermarket. Within the same building, a 190-unit dormitory will be constructed above with a separate entranceway.
During phase II--spanning 2022 to 2031--the university would construct a 14-story, 250,000-square-foot academic building on Mercer Street and an eight-story academic building on LaGuardia Place. Throughout the development, nearly half of the space for the superblocks will be below grade, the university says.
The school also proposes to create a 60,000-square-foot interior courtyard, a new playground on the corner of LaGuardia Place and Bleecker Street, installing a tricycle garden on the corner of West 3rd Street and Mercer, and increasing public open space by 130,000 square feet.
In response to the plan, Andrew Berman, executive director of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, tells GlobeSt.com that the modifications are “literally and figuratively” tinkering at the edges. “What they are basically are saying is for two strips of parkland, they would propose that the parks department take possession of it, but they be given the right through an easement to build underneath it, to dig through it, to place construction equipment on it and to close it off to the public for years at a time when they wish,” Berman says. “It is really a win-win for the university and a lose-lose for the community. This is not, in any way, what we were asking for in terms of the green strips,” he adds.
The GVSHP opposes the core issues of the NYU 2031 project and plans to testify against the designation. “They haven’t changed a single square foot of the two-and-a-half million square feet of space that they are seeking the special zoning approvals to build,” Berman says. “Much of this enormous new construction would be virtually on-top of, and directly adjacent to, these quote-un-quote parks so they would be in perpetuity.”
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