Decision in lawsuit blocks major portion of massive building project
On January 7th, Judge Donna Mills ruled against NYU’s massive 20-year expansion plan in the lawsuit by the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation (GVSHP), NYU Faculty Against the Sexton Plan, Assemblymember Deborah Glick, and dozens of other community and preservation groups, handing a stinging defeat to the university and the City, which approved the plan.
The New York State Supreme Court judge found that the City illegally gave public parkland to NYU for their planned two million square foot, four-building expansion project. The ruling directly impacts three of NYU’s four planned new buildings, making two impossible to build and the third extremely difficult. While the fourth planned building is not sited on park land covered by the judge’s ruling, community groups and their lawyers argued that this should force the entire plan back to square one, and no portion of the plan – now clearly based upon inaccurate and illegal presumptions – should be allowed to proceed.
NYU is already threatening to appeal the decision, though the City may be the ultimate arbiter of what happens with the suit. We are hopeful that Mayor de Blasio will take a fairer and more thoughtful approach than his predecessor, and that the new City Council will not support the prior plan which was based upon what have now been determined to be illegal underpinnings. Instead, we are pushing for a new and more inclusive process, which considers real alternatives to NYU’s plans for a massive expansion in the Village.
NYU’s original plan involved the construction of four massive buildings on the two large “superblocks” between West 3rd and Houston Streets, LaGuardia Place, and Mercer Street. None of the buildings were legal under the existing zoning, urban renewal agreements, and open space preservation requirements, and required handing public playgrounds, park space, and gardens over to NYU. However, with the approval of then-Borough President Stringer, and the former City Planning Commission and City Council, those rules were overturned and the park space alienated for use by NYU. In response, a group of NYU faculty members opposing the plan, GVSHP, the Historic Districts Council, Assemblymember Deborah Glick, and a vast array of community and preservation groups and individuals sued to overturn the approvals. Judge Donna Mills agreed with us on one of the central contentions of our lawsuit.
GVSHP has long opposed NYU’s expansion plans in the Village and has urged the university and the City to work together to identify sites outside of the Village to absorb NYU’s growth. In 2012, we commissioned an independent study showing that New York City would benefit more from locating NYU’s expansion outside of the Village than from locating it within our neighborhood, as there would be greater positive economic spin-off effects in other locations.
You can find out more about the fight against NYU’s Village expansion plan at www.gvshp.org/nyu
