Columbia Spectator - CB9 Passes Alternate Plans for W. Harlem

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CB9 Passes Alternate Plans for W. Harlem
By Matthew Carhart
Spectator Senior Staff Writer

October 22, 2004

After months of debate and planning, Community Board 9 unanimously passed a resolution last night endorsing an alternative to Columbia's expansion plans.

The report, known as the 197-A plan, was designed in consultation with the Brooklyn-based Pratt Institute over the past year. It will be presented to New York City Department of City Planning, which will consider it when deciding how to rezone Manhattanville, the area into which Columbia wants to expand.

The vote passed 32-0 without any abstentions among Community Board members at yesterday's monthly meeting. The chair also took an unofficial vote of other residents present at the meeting, who voted 26-0 in favor of the resolution.

The 40-page resolution was designed to "improve the quality of life for area residents, to preserve historical building patterns and neighborhood scale, to encourage the creation and development of job-intensive businesses to benefit local residents, and to allow for population growth in a manner that promotes diversity of incomes without displacement of existing CB9 residents."

The unanimous vote echoes CB9's unanimous vote against the potential use of eminent domain in West Harlem last month.

The University released its own blueprint for expansion this March.

A few attendees at the meeting spoke in support of the resolution. Tom Kappner, a member of the Coalition to Preserve Community, said, "Because I see a lot of Columbia students here, this is not an anti-Columbia plan ... but it will not endorse a campus apart from [the community]."

Tom DeMott, another member of the CPC, seconded Kappner's support. "It was a democratically done plan, the likes of which is rarely seen in New York," he said.

But DeMott expressed caution, telling other meeting attendees that the fight is not over.

"Once we get this thing through [the Community Board], there will be a million ways to slice it and dice it."

Other items were also on the meeting agenda. The 26th Precinct's deputy inspector informed meeting attendees that two young men, 16 and 18 years old, were arrested on Wednesday in Morningside Park following eight or nine burglaries in the park in the last month. The young men have confessed to all of the burglaries. The police presented a picture of one of the suspects because the suspect had received a court summons for having sex in Morningside Park.

Meeting attendees also went through the laborious process of choosing members for the Nominating Committee, which will nominate candidates for the officers that will serve on the board next year.

New York State Assemblyman Danny O'Donnell reminded the audience that he will be on the ballot in two weeks, though he said he has not seen his opponent.

The meeting had a health-related theme: blood screening was offered to all attendees, a local doctor discussed asthma treatment, and a representative from New York City's Health Department said that people between the ages of 2 and 64 should plan on abstaining from flu shots unless they suffer from serious medical conditions.
CB9 Passes Alternate Plans for W. Harlem