(see http://www.nysun.com/article/29515)
A Satellite Campus
By ANDREW BERMAN
March 21, 2006
Recently, New York University announced plans to build a 26-story dormitory on a narrow, residential side street in the East Village, which will be the tallest building in the predominantly low-rise East Village. The reaction in the community, unsurprisingly, has been near-unanimous opposition. But if there's a feeling of deja vu to this situation, it's because this development follows more than 20 years of expansion by NYU in the Village, during which they've built a dozen new high-rises, bringing to a total of 100 the number of buildings they occupy, in whole or part, in this small area.
NYU is now the largest private university in the country, located in a neighborhood long known and loved for its human scale and vibrant atmosphere. NYU and several other smaller schools have long been a part of this neighborhood, but not its defining presence. Unsurprisingly, many in the Village fear their neighborhood is reaching a tipping point, that we may no longer simply be home to a university, but may become, for all intents and purposes, its campus.
And this lies at the heart of the increasing bitterness and acrimony between NYU and its neighbors. Having transformed from a midranked commuter school to a top-ranked university attracting students from around the world, NYU has also gone from a modest outpost at the southeast corner of Washington Square to an inescapable presence throughout much of the Village and East Village. If current trends continue, in another 20 years the Village may be unrecognizable, consumed, to a large degree, by a single institution to which it played host for 175 years.
This creates a conundrum in which it would seem almost certain that someone has to lose. To stop NYU's development would forsake the jobs and skilled professionals the university's growth draws. And to ask NYU to build its next dorm or science center in some other neighborhood, when universities always seek to have their facilities in close proximity to one another, is likely a non-starter as well.
But there may be a solution that could work for everybody, and the key may be to look backward as well as forward. NYU used to have a Bronx campus, which it sold off in the early 1970s, consolidating almost all of its facilities downtown. That campus, from which the University Heights neighborhood got its name, was long an anchor in the neighborhood, which NYU and many others left as the city's economy and population shrank in the 1970s.
Far from contracting as it was 30 years ago, New York is now growing faster than it has in recent memory. And all of that growth neither can nor should be contained in economically advantaged neighborhoods like the Village. A secondary campus of a prestigious university like NYU could be a vital underpinning for any number of neighborhoods the city and local communities are seeking to develop, whether in the outer boroughs, the Financial District, or on Governors Island. Because NYU is actually composed of 14 separate schools, it could easily lend itself to one or more secondary campuses, and because of the Village's central location and generous subway service (almost every line in the city runs through the neighborhood), most other potential sites could be easily connected to the main campus by mass transit.
That's why a broad coalition of downtown neighborhood groups are asking the city and NYU to find one or more locations for a secondary campus for NYU outside of the Village, so this neighborhood does not have to absorb all of the university's growth. And while a secondary campus for NYU would clearly benefit both the Village and the city as a whole, we believe it would also benefit NYU. The university currently must fight for any site it can get its hands on in a neighborhood with one of the tightest real estate markets in the city. And NYU, like its neighbors, suffers from the total lack of planning the university is able to do; lacking a real campus, NYU never knows when its next expansion will take place because it never knows when a property will become available that it can acquire and develop.
Thus no one really benefits from the current situation. The Village and East Village are in danger of losing their character forever, while the potential benefits that NYU could offer to any number of neighborhoods have become wasted overkill in the Village. As New York City experiences its most robust growth in decades, and we seek to build strong foundations for neighborhoods throughout the five boroughs, it's time for NYU and our city planners to think outside the box. To truly plan for our future, the city and NYU must find new locations for the university's growth outside of the Village.
Mr. Berman is the executive director of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation (www.gvshp.org).