By Patrick Hedlund
DNAinfo News Editor
EAST VILLAGE — New York University’s plan to develop an additional 6 million square feet of real estate across the city does not currently include any projects in the East Village, but the scope of the expansion still has local residents wary about what it may mean for their community.
NYU representatives outlined the university’s long-term growth plan in a presentation to Community Board 3 Monday, including recent acquisitions in the school’s Greenwich Village “core” campus area and satellite development in Kips Bay, Downtown Brooklyn and Governors Island.
But given the university’s highly visible presence in the East Village, residents wondered what to expect in their neighborhood as the school expands over the next 20 years.
Alicia Hurley, NYU’s vice president of government affairs and community engagement, acknowledged that the college has already “oversaturated” Third Avenue and that they are trying “to be a lot more sensitive to what we are bringing in to communities.”
“So now you’ll come and oversaturate First Avenue?” a committee member asked.
Hurley said she thought the school could plan "more sensibly," but nonetheless admitted that “we would always be open to [development] opportunities.”
The number of students living in the East Village, whether in NYU dormitories or rental apartments, has proved to be the most contentious aspect of the college’s increased presence in the neighborhood.
A 26-story dorm opened on 12th Street near Third Avenue last fall — the tallest building in the East Village — earning the ire of local residents and preservationists alike for its out-of-scale height.
“I think that’s the use that’s the most…” said committee chairman David McWater about dorm use, pausing briefly before a chorus of committee members finished his sentence by adding, “controversial.”
Hurley noted that even though NYU’s student growth rate is slowing, the school will still need to accommodate about 4,000 additional students over the next 20 years.
She explained that any future dorm would be built for a minimum of 300 students — the equivalent of an approximately 175,000-square-foot building, which amounts to the size of about six average lots, McWater noted.
Furthermore, committee members explained, the waves of upperclassmen that often choose to rent apartments in the East Village lead to the “secondary displacement” of longtime area tenants.
Committee members also calculated that after building facilities in its core and satellite areas, the university would still have up to 1.5 million unidentified square feet to develop under the proposed plan.
NYU’s purchase of properties like the Forbes building on lower Fifth Avenue and its intention to more fully develop its “superblocks” in Greenwich Village will accommodate much of the square footage, but there’s still a “very good chance that a lot of what’s planned for the core might not happen,” said Andrew Berman, executive director of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation and an NYU watchdog.
He explained that 95 percent of what the school has proposed for the core would require “unprecedented” zoning and landmarks approvals, and that there is “not a lot of specificity” about where the leftover square footage will land.
Berman and other committee members urged NYU to consider overtures by lower Manhattan community leaders to build a high-rise in the Financial District — something the school has yet to warm to — and to look to the outer boroughs for additional space.
Overall, the university needs to execute a better planning strategy to avoid having to “shoe horn” new facilities into cramped neighborhoods, said committee member Barden Prisant, who’s also a member of a task force organized to monitor NYU’s development plans.
The committee agreed to establish a set of guidelines to present to NYU regarding its actions moving forward, but did not formally vote on any aspect of the broader proposal.
