City Council, take note: your colleague, Margaret Chin, did NOT listen to her own constituents, keeping all community groups including the Community Board out of any negotiations or discussions until after the Land Use Committee vote. The “deal” is not a compromise, it’s a gift of everything NYU sought in Greenwich Village. Right the wrong – Council must vote NO on NYU 2031.
Not one of the “concessions” negotiated were anything that the community asked for, and every one of the requested buildings, minus a few floors on top, was included. NYU will be allowed to take PUBLIC land, reduce open space, and destroy community-created (and paid for) amenities such as playgrounds and gardens. Any benefits to NYC would be the same – or greater – if NYU built in areas that want and need development, rather than in the established residential community of Greenwich Village.
NYU not only got everything they asked, they got more – the moveup of the timetable for SCA to ask for a school building on the Bleecker site to 2014 means that SCA, whose budget for 2014 is already done, is very likely to say no. This gives NYU yet another 100,000 square feet, in which they will be landlord at reduced rent for 25,000 square feet. Yes, the community gets NOTHING except the ability to be NYU’s for-pay tenant.
Many of the promises NYU made, after decades of reneging on promises, are not even in the restrictive declaration. The phasing is not in writing so any building can go up at any time despite assurances, public land is gone with construction staging on even the “saved” city-owned land that NYU will change into their own access plazas, and much more.
This is a BAD DEAL for the Greenwich Village community, for the tourists that will no longer come here, for New York City, and even for NYU.
