If passed, phase I of NYU’s 2031 plan involves the development of four new buildings on two-university owned superblocks. Totaling 800,000 square feet, the project—known as NYU Core—will include new academic buildings, faculty and student housing, a new athletic facility, a University-affiliated hotel and retail.

LaBarbera—who represents 100,000 members of the city’s construction trade industry—said the plan would equate to thousands of union construction jobs, as well as many indirect jobs in the neighborhood, which could grow the city’s tax base to nearly $1.5 billion in economic output.

“We in the building trades support NYU in 2031, and we believe all New Yorkers should do the same,” he said. “We are here to urge you Borough President Stringer to support the ULURP application for this plan at this critical juncture. We’ve worked with the Borough President before and know that he has an important role to play in this process. We, of course, expect him to play that role. Ultimately, we must work together to advance NYU 2031, not hinder it.”

In an interview following the gathering, Tony Juliano, president of the Greenwich Village-Chelsea Chamber of Commerce, tells GlobeSt.com that NYU’s proposal is a “thoughtful growth plan” that differs from that of Columbia University’s Manhattanville expansion into West Harlem, which involved a major rezoning of manufacturing lands, as well as the use of eminent domain.

“That’s not what’s happening here,” Juliano said. “In listening and talking with the community, residents and small businesses alike when they came up with this plan over a long period of time, this doesn’t just happen overnight. As a result, we are seeing thoughtful growth plans that I think are absolutely right for our neighborhood.”

But after five years of public review and discussion, the plan still remains a contentious issue in the local community. CB2’s resolution notes that the university’s current proposal is “far too big for a dense residential neighborhood such as Greenwich Village” and “would have severely damaging and long-lasting consequences to the neighborhood’s essential character and resources, including socioeconomic diversity, public open space, historic preservation and quality of life.”

In response, Juliano said the West Village—and its businesses—need to continuously evolve in order to stay competitive both locally and nationally. “People are afraid of change, and I get that,” he said. “It’s a wonderful, wonderful neighborhood. When there’s something big afoot, everybody gets nervous, and their knee-jerk, I think, is to say ‘no, let’s just leave it the way it is.’ But in a city like New York, you can’t just stay still. You must continually invest and grow this city, and this is one way to do it in our neighborhood.”

But others still believe the plan needs to be re-worked. Andrew Berman, executive director of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation–one of the main players leading the opposition of the project—tells GlobeSt.com that the non-profit has been flooding the Borough President’s office with letters, e-mails, phone calls and faxes urging Stringer to cast a ‘no’ vote.

“We want the city and the university to go back to the drawing board and come up with a much better approach that would be better long-term for the city and long-term for the university as well,” he says, in a phone interview after the rally. “The Chamber of Commerce will support any development proposal, and the builders will support any construction project. We believe that the NYU 2031 plan would have a devastatingly detrimental effect on the Village, and that there are much better alternatives that the University and the city should consider,” he says, suggesting an area such as the Financial District, which could absorb some of that growth.

“In the Financial District, community leaders there have said they would welcome it. It would be contextual and would help meet the long-term goals to create a 24-hour-a-day neighborhood with cultural and educational facilities, lessening the dependence upon the financial industry down there,” he says. “There, it is a win-win, and in the Village, it is a lose-lose.”

Vin Cipolla, president of the Municipal Art Society New York, an urban advocacy organization that fights for intelligent planning, design, dialogue and education, tells GlobeSt.com that the BP’s decision will be a crucial step in the land use process. “Economic development matters to people, and that always needs to be taken seriously,” he says. “Institutions need to expand and NYU is going to need to expand over the next 30 years. Then it really becomes the ways in which that expansion would happen.”

MAS has recommended that NYU's plan for the two superblocks is "too aggressive," but the organization has also recognized that the university has needs, and those needs, one way or another, need to be met.

“With any redevelopment or any revitalization plan, there is always an opportunity to return things back to the neighborhood, if you will,” Cipolla says. “One of the things about those two blocks now is that they are very foreboding and they are not very connected or welcoming to the neighborhood. One of the things that can certainly be achieved in some redevelopment efforts, even modest redevelopment efforts, would be to really open up that parkland space to the neighborhood, really thread it in, make it much more contextual to the blocks surrounding so it could really fulfill its initial vision to be a part of the community and be some lungs for that community.”