Set on plan: Columbia prez Lee Bollinger.
April 4, 2007 -- COLUMBIA University's strategy to expand northward into Manhattanville is basically good for New York. Yet local support for the plan has been far from unanimous - and some of the hostility is Columbia's own fault.
April 4, 2007 -- COLUMBIA University's strategy to expand northward into Manhattanville is basically good for New York. Yet local support for the plan has been far from unanimous - and some of the hostility is Columbia's own fault.
The school should back off on its stubborn insistence on retaining eminent domain as an option (to be exercised by the state of New York) if it can't purchase privately all the land it believes it needs.
Yes, part of the problem is the somehow ever-fresh historical legacy of 1968, when Columbia's plan to build a gym in Morningside Park provoked fierce community opposition. And part is the class antagonism generated by an exclusive, elite university bordered by struggling neighborhoods.
On its merits, the plan's virtues should overcome mere prejudice. The expansion of Columbia, already the city's seventh largest private employer, would add another 6,900 premium jobs - high pay, with generous benefits and pensions - to the local economy.
And the 17 acres on which the school hopes to build (bordered by 125th and 133rd streets, and by Broadway and Riverside Drive) are largely underused relative to the rest of Manhattan.
The sticking point is plainly Columbia's demand to get it all. Luisa Henriquez, who lives in a city-owned building on 132nd Street, puts it this way: "Columbia moving in is a bad thing because Columbia isn't willing to share."
The sticking point is plainly Columbia's demand to get it all. Luisa Henriquez, who lives in a city-owned building on 132nd Street, puts it this way: "Columbia moving in is a bad thing because Columbia isn't willing to share."
"We're not going to take [eminent domain] off the table," says Columbia Executive Vice President Robert Kasdin. "We're going to preserve our right to argue to the state that it's in the public interest that they do it."
Yet even the strongest Harlem supporters of the Manhattanville plan, like realtor Willie Kathryn Suggs, balk. "I don't want them invoking eminent domain for private use. It's not right," says Suggs. "The neighborhood will get safer streets and better restaurants. I want that to happen. But under the rules. If they want more property they should buy it fairly, like anyone else."
And the opponents are ferocious. Manhattanville's largest private property owner, Nick Sprayregen, President of Tuck-It-Away Self-Storage, says that Columbia wants four of his five buildings. (The fifth, which was landmarked last year, is being left alone.) "My father built this business, which I intend to hand onto my children," he says. "We worked hard for the neighborhood, and intend to be part of its success.
"I won't move," Sprayregen insists. "But Columbia wants it all - 100 percent of everything. They have no desire for nuance, for compromise, for diversity."
Columbia argues that Manhattanville is "blighted," a condition that automatically allows the state to exercise eminent domain. It says its goal is to "transform what is now a largely isolated, underutilized streetscape of garage openings, empty ground floors, roll-down metal gates and chain-link fences on the blocks from West 125th to 133rd Streets into a cohesive, reanimated center for educational, commercial and community life."
Ester Fuchs, a Columbia professor of International and Public Affairs and Political Science, is right when she argues, "The health of the city historically has always been about neighborhood transformation. For neighborhoods to stay the same is a recipe for a stagnant city."
But healthy transformations in American cities have generally been more successfully accomplished by homeowners, restaurateurs, retailers and small business owners acting individually - not by huge institutions exercising the government's power of eminent domain.
And a key reason the area is underdeveloped is the city's zoning laws - which reserve those blocks for industrial use, for which there have been few takers in decades.
And a key reason the area is underdeveloped is the city's zoning laws - which reserve those blocks for industrial use, for which there have been few takers in decades.
Sprayregen fully understands the irony of his situation. He operates a business in a neighborhood whose long, slow decline can be blamed on city government. Now that same municipally-imposed decline may be pronounced "blight" by the state, triggering the loss of his property.
"This is blight forced on the neighborhood by city regulations," he notes. "But despite its zoning, the neighborhood is far better off now than it's ever been. Yet Columbia, ironically, is claiming it's so terrible and so blighted."
To determine if eminent domain can be invoked, the state will rely on a "blight assessment" being conducted by AKRF, an environmental consulting firm. But the company is also drawing up the Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) for Columbia - which raises obvious questions about the independence of the blight assessment.
There are many who argue that the neighborhood is already on its way back. They point to the artists' studios and lofts, the rehabilitated city-owned apartment buildings, the good restaurants and the successful manufacturing firms as proof that the neighborhood, far from blighted, is experiencing a natural renaissance.
Columbia wants a contiguous campus - but that may well produce a less interesting streetscape than what would derive from a mix of academic buildings and private businesses.
"I can co-exist with Columbia," says Sprayregen. "Why can't Columbia coexist with me?"
"I can co-exist with Columbia," says Sprayregen. "Why can't Columbia coexist with me?"
Julia Vitullo-Martin is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and author of the Center for Rethinking Development's newsletter, from which this is adapted.
