CITY HALL — Matthew Broderick and hundreds of other Greenwich Village residents flooded City Council chambers Friday for a hearing on NYU's planned expansion in the neighborhood.
The mood in the room was tense as the university's president, John Sexton, and his colleagues made their case for the expansion and presented details of how it would fit within the fabric of the Village.
He said NYU students feel "compressed" in their current campus, and added that NYU needs to "give students more value for what they're putting in."
Broderick, who grew up in the Village, said he had concerns about NYU's plan.
"For me open park land is extremely important there's not that much of it and I've watched so much of it disappear so many small, nice, beautiful buildings be knocked over for huge dorm," Broderick said, according to NY1. "I just think it's gone too far and it's really hurting the village."
But Greenwich Village residents and activists remained unimpressed, and gave Occupy Wall Street-esque spirit fingers shimmying in the air in response to Councilwoman Margaret Chin's assertion that NYU's plan was "unacceptable in its current form," and that NYU's growth should not come at "the expense of residents' quality of life."
