By Julie Shapiro
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
FINANCIAL DISTRICT — Don’t expect New York University to build an outpost in lower Manhattan anytime soon.
While community leaders downtown are begging NYU to invest in the neighborhood, university officials are skeptical.
“I can’t tell if this is for real or if it’s some crazy political scheme,” said Alicia Hurley, NYU’s vice president of government affairs and community engagement. “It has just felt very aggressive to us.”
Last month, NYU released a plan to expand 6 million square feet by 2031. About half of the expansion is slated for NYU’s superblocks in the Village.
When Village preservationists complained that NYU has already oversaturated its core neighborhood, the leaders of Community Board 1 got an idea.
“Where the Village feels overloaded, we feel under-loaded,” said Jeff Galloway, chairman of CB1’s Planning Committee, at a meeting last Thursday. “We need more foot traffic. We need more support for arts institutions.”
Julie Menin, CB1 chairwoman, suggested several weeks ago that NYU build one of its planned Village skyscrapers, for visiting faculty housing, on the Tower 5 site at the World Trade Center instead. The Port Authority has not announced any plans for that site since JPMorgan Chase backed out of building new headquarters there two years ago.
Hurley, though, said it would be impossible for NYU to build a large tower on the market-rate property at the World Trade Center.
“We would have to empty our endowment,” she said at a meeting of CB1’s Planning Committee last Thursday. “We don’t have the economic resources to build that much square footage.”
NYU can build much more cheaply on its own superblocks, she said.
Menin and others are also pushing NYU to look at other stalled construction sites downtown.
Hurley said she would consider sites in the Financial District, but “It just has to make sense for us academically,” she said.
Hurley added that the Financial District is a long walk from NYU’s Washington Square campus. She also wants to make sure lower Manhattan has enough services to support a new building, she said.
Galloway did not appear dissuaded by Hurley’s hesitations.
“We’re putting out the welcome mat,” he told her. “We have plenty of space and we’re not that far away.”
