Columbia Spectator - Griffith Brings A Local Touch

Columbia Spectator

Griffith Brings A Local Touch
Former City Planner is CU�s New Local Liaison
By Erin Durkin
Spectator Staff Writer

November 11, 2005

Before getting down to the details of zoning law and environmental review at Columbia�s first community meeting earlier this fall, Maxine Griffith had a personal message for the crowd: �I�m very happy to be back home,� she said.

For Griffith, hired in July as Columbia�s vice president for government and community affairs�a position that was vacant for a year before she took it up­�it was not an easy landing. Perhaps more than anyone else at Columbia, it�s her job to shepherd the University�s controversial Manhattanville expansion plan through a skeptical community and repair relations with an institution many in the neighborhood see as self-interested and unaccountable.

Even with her Harlem roots and extensive urban planning background working in her favor, Griffith acknowledges this is no easy task. Yet she is confident that it�s one at which she, and Columbia, will ultimately succeed.

Crossing Over

Before coming to Columbia this summer, Griffith was the executive director of the Philadelphia Planning Commission. She has served on the New York City Planning Commission, and, under the Clinton Administration, she was the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development�s regional representative for New York and New Jersey. She even worked on the design of the West Harlem Waterfront with a private development firm.

With her long history in Harlem, some might view Griffith�s decision to work for Columbia as defecting to the enemy. But she sees it as a natural outgrowth of the work she has done all her life.

�The community and elected officials have been trying to rejuvenate that area and promote development for at least 17 or 18 years,� she said. �I was involved with some of those early attempts.�

�My view is that the most beneficial synergy would be for a university to expand in that area,� she said.

For her, it was a perfect fit. �This wasn�t the only job I got offered in New York. And it wasn�t the most money I was offered. But it seemed like, given my skill set and my interests, [this was] the most important thing I could do with my time,� she said.

Personal Relationships, Institutional Challenges

Griffith is well-regarded personally by most of the community members with whom she works, many of whom knew her long before she came to Columbia. After meetings, she can often be seen trading hugs and sharing laughs with the same people who have just spent hours lobbing tough questions in her direction.

Community Board 9 chairman Jordi Reyes-Montblanc described Griffith as �a thoroughly professional planner with great experience, a sterling background, and high credibility.�

Yet personal relationships alone will not be enough to overcome the community�s concerns about expansion. Worries about eminent domain, gentrification, and displacement caused by the University�s expansion will not pass easily.

�Columbia has a need to become credible to the community ... Confidence and credibility will be achieved only through deeds and actions responsive to the community,� Reyes-Montblanc noted.

With this in mind, Griffith has focused on building a staff capable of responding effectively to the community�s needs. She has made two senior-level hires for newly created positions: Karen Jewitt will start as assistant vice president for university relations in December, attempting to facilitate dialogue with students and faculty and keep the student body informed of administrative actions. Victoria Mason-Ailey, the new assistant vice president for planning and project coordination, will focus specifically on the Manhattanville project, and starts this month.

Griffith mentioned the series of informational meetings leading up to the environmental review process as a concrete example of how the University has responded to community needs.

�They haven�t always been easy. I can�t say they�ve always been a lot of fun. But I think they�ve been very useful and very helpful,� she said of the meetings. �I think we�ve heard things that we need to hear, and I think, for those in the community that are willing to listen, we�ve transferred a lot of information.�

She also touted the plans to build a magnet school as part of the Manhattanville campus as something that was handled well.

�I think it�s a great thing for Columbia to do. I think it�s fantastic to have a new high school in Harlem,� she said, adding that �it would be very nice if we were all thought better of because of the school, [but] that�s not why we�re doing it. ... We don�t expect some kind of bonus points for doing it. We�re doing it because it�s the right thing to do.�

In the few months that Griffith has served as the expansion plan�s spokeswoman in West Harlem, she has encountered considerable hostility and skepticism from opponents of the plan. She tries not to let it faze her.

�It�s never fun to be yelled at, but you sort of mentally turn down the volume a little bit and try to look at what was said, or where the hurt was coming out,� she said.

�The tone of people�s voices doesn�t necessarily speak to the quality and content of what they have to say,� she said, adding, �These are folks who feel deeply about their concerns, they�re trying to get their point across ... and sometimes they get caught up in that passion, and they want to be listened to.�

She says that her roots in the neighborhood help her understand their point of view. �I am able to share ... some of the history of the community that makes them sensitive in specific areas,� she said.

Ghosts of Emily Lloyd

Though Griffith is trying to blaze her own trail at Columbia, it�s impossible for her to avoid comparisons to her predecessor, Emily Lloyd. Though she was revered by many in the community, by the time Lloyd left Columbia in the summer of 2004 the widespread perception was that she had lost all her sway within the administration; many of her responsibilities were shifted to senior executive vice president Robert Kasdin after President Lee Bollinger�s arrival.

Whether Griffith signals a return to the early days of Lloyd�s tenure, when she provided a powerful voice for the community within the administration, remains unclear.

�Emily was here during a change in administration ... that complicated relationships,� Griffith said, adding that, when she was hired, �I was clear about the authorizations I felt that I would need to do my job.�

�I try always to have my authority match my responsibilities,� Griffith said.

Still, she knows her limitations. At one recent meeting, when Griffith was pressed on whether Columbia would release certain correspondence related to the possible use of eminent domain in Manhattanville, she replied, �That�s above my pay grade,� prompting skeptical groans from the audience.

But Reyes-Montblanc said that a disconnect between Griffith�s external role and her internal influence had not become a problem, at least not yet.

�I have no doubts ... that Robert Kasdin and Maxine Griffith have all of the necessary authorities with Lee Bollinger�s and even the Trustees� support to address everything and anything with the proper community representatives,� he said.

A Happy Ending?

Ultimately, Griffith believes that the expansion will be completed in a way that not only benefits but even pleases the community.

That vision might seem far-fetched now, with University officials and community activists espousing nearly diametrically opposing views for the future of the Manhattanville neighborhood. But in the years to come, Griffith said, things will change.

�A lot of what people say in passion is not necessarily what they really feel,� she said, �and I�ve been involved in a lot of projects where, at the end, at the ribbon-cutting, people are crying and hugging. I�ve been to projects where people have gotten housing units and wave out the window and say it all worked out. I believe that that�s going to happen here.�

Getting from here to there, she said, will require �a lot of sweat.�

�It�s testing and listening and responding and checking, and checking with the experts and seeing what the legalities are,� she said. �It�s a long and fraught process. But when you have a project as large and complex and as potentially great as this one, it�s really worth going through.�