(Save the date: RealShare New York comes to the Grand Hyatt, New York, NY, October 9.)

NEW YORK CITY-Despite receiving a rubber stamp from the City Council earlier this year, several neighborhood groups and local stakeholders have joined together to file a lawsuit against New York University in its attempt to add nearly two million square feet of commercial development in Greenwich Village. According to a verified petition obtained by GlobeSt.com, the case argues that NYU’s 20-year core expansion project is “disproportionate to the surrounding area” and city officials “failed to give adequate consideration to less intrusive alternatives and mitigation measures” in reducing the size and scale of the plan.

“Despite the length of our complaint, the case is straightforward: the City Council and Planning Commission failed to do their jobs properly, choosing to accommodate NYU’s desires for more land instead of protecting Greenwich Village and its residents as the law requires,” says Jim Walden, a partner at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP, counsel on behalf of the petitioners, in a statement. “We look forward to proving in court what the entire community already knows: this process was a preordained political compromise, which the community had no effective ability to change.”