By Carla Zanoni
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
INWOOD — Columbia University announced Friday that construction on its Campbell Sports Center will begin by the end of April, surprising community members who have been working to hammer out a community benefits agreement with the university.
Susan Ryan, a spokeswoman for local group Advocates for Inwood Manhattan (AIM), said she had learned about the new construction timeframe through a Columbia Spectator article on Friday.
"I was surprised to read it in a Columbia University newspaper and not from Columbia officials," she said.
"To be honest we were not aware that the construction was going to start so quickly," she said adding that "pre-construction" meetings are one of the items being negotiated "by the community in the community partnership agreement that has yet to be finalized."
According to Ryan, Columbia officials informed her on Saturday that a meeting was in the works and would be soon be organized after AIM reached out to the University.
"These construction meetings are a part of the terms that are being negotiated with Columbia and I would hope that this is something they would take upon themselves to do without pressure from community," she added.
Columbia officials did not respond to requests for comment.
Demolition of the small maintenance building where the new sports complex will be built has already begun and geotechnical borings have been drilled into the ground around the site to determine the nature of the underlying sediments, Columbia spokesperson Dan Held told the Spectator, adding construction will last 12 to 15 months once started.
Columbia received the green light from the City Council on April 6 to move forward with its plans to build a 47,700-square-foot field house at 218th Street and Broadway without turning over the normally required 15 percent of the project's land for public use.
Instead, Columbia will set aside just 1.5 percent of its property for public use.
