NEW YORK CITY—New York University has received the go ahead for its large scale, $6 billion expansion plan from the state's highest court following a protracted battle with community activists. A construction schedule is forthcoming in the next few months.
The project's total approved space is nearly two million square feet, with 900,000 square feet below grade, an NYU spokesman tells GlobeSt.com. It involves four buildings on two blocks south of Washington Square and is expected to take at least two decades to complete. The first project will include classrooms, specialized performing arts education and performance spaces, a below-grade replacement for the gym, student and faculty housing.
In a unanimous ruling, the Court of Appeals rejected a last-ditch appeal by opponents of the expansion, led by Manhattan Assemblywoman Deborah Glick, who claimed the City Council wrongly allowed parkland to be used for the project, according to the Daily News. The court ruled there was no evidence the parcels—Mercer Playground, LaGuardia Park, LaGuardia Corner Gardens and Mercer-Houston Dog Run—were formally dedicated as parkland.”
“This project has been the subject of years of planning and review, been approved overwhelmingly by the City Planning Commission and City Council, and now has been given the go-ahead by the state's highest court,” says an NYU spokesman. “With the Court's ruling, we will now undertake intensive planning, and we will have more specific information on a construction timetable in the coming months.
"The project not only keeps NYU academically competitive and helps fulfill our educational mission, it also benefits New York, as does today's decision,” he continues. “The project will produce jobs and economic benefits, create public open spaces—including playgrounds and planted seating areas—and enable NYU to contribute to the city's idea economy and highly educated workforce by recruiting top scholars and top students.”
However, Glick contends to the New York Times, the decision “puts the limited open space that we jealously guard and protect totally at risk everywhere in the city.” A Democrat in whose district NYU sits, was a Plantiff in the case.
Adds Andrew Berman, executive director of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, “We're already suffering from an extreme over-concentration of N.Y.U.-related uses. Thousands of additional people and millions of additional square feet of construction is eventually going to make the Village feel like a company town.” The society is consulting its lawyers about any other legal recourse that might stop or alter the expansion, according to the Times.
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Rayna Katz
Rayna Katz is a seasoned business journalist whose extensive experience includes coverage of the lodging sector, travel and the culinary space. She was most recently content director for a business-to-business publisher, overseeing four publications. While at Meeting News, a travel trade publication, she received a Best Reporting award for a story on meeting cancellations in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina.
