ESDC Calls M’ville Blighted, Approves Eminent Domain

The Empire State Development Corporation, a state agency that regulates economic and urban growth, declared the Manhattanville expansion site “blighted” on July 17.

The pivotal decision paves the way for the state to transfer property to the University through eminent domain if it so chooses. At the meeting, the ESDC board of directors adopted the University’s General Project Plan—which details the expansion proposal— requested that the state invoke eminent domain, and committed to providing benefits to the surrounding community.

The General Project Plan explained the blight designation saying, “the high percentage of lots with deteriorating, insanitary and/or underutilized property conditions indicates that the Project Site has been suffering from long-term poor maintenance and disinvestment,” preventing “the integration of the Project Site into the surrounding community.”

ESDC representatives stressed the positive impact the new campus could bring to the neighborhood. “Columbia’s expansion will bring thousands of new jobs to the city and revitalize an area that has been plagued by under investment,” ESDC Downstate President Avi Schick said in a statement.

But a broad variety of community activists have continued to voice objections to the plan, especially with the prospect of state enforced property transfers of the two outstanding businesses. Rev. Earl Kooperkamp, pastor of St. Mary’s Church on W. 126th Street, called eminent domain for a private institution “theft” of land and of a community.

“The General Project Plan is a plan that really enables Columbia to do 100% what it wants to do, and I’m afraid that that’s really going to keep the neighborhood marginalized,” he said in testimony to ESDC board members.

ESDC directors announced at the meeting that a second firm, Earth Tech, had been employed for the blight study, after Allee King Rosen & Fleming, the firm the state originally employed caused controversy.

The firm came under fire when Manhattanville property owner, Nick Sprayregen, filed a Freedom of Information case seeking documents that showed it had an “inseparable conflict [of interest]” due to its simultaneous employment by both Columbia and ESDC. The court ruled in Sprayregen’s favor last month.

Norman Siegel, a civil rights lawyer who represents Sprayregen, objected to the classification of Manhattanville as a blighted area, saying blight is legally defined as “a threat to public health and safety” that has “a detrimental blighting effect on surrounding areas.” Siegel and Sprayregen vowed to continue fighting Columbia in court, specifically to challenge the blight finding on grounds of its methodology.

The announcement that Earth Tech had been hired by ESDC “to replicate the study of neighborhood conditions” sparked a heated exchange between New York State Senator Bill Perkins (D-West Harlem and Central Harlem), and the ESDC board.
“It’s outrageous to me that you would have done such a study that I and my colleagues have never seen,” he said.

“It’s always good to have more eyes looking at it than fewer eyes looking at it,” Schick told reporters after the meeting. “As the timeline lengthened ... we said why not go back and look again and see if we get the same results with somebody else, and we did.”

Columbia has repeatedly promised it would not seek eminent domain for residential properties within the expansion site, but the General Project Plan states ESDC would “use its eminent domain power to acquire possession of any legal residential unit” after 2018.

The Plan relies on Columbia relocating the 298 tenants who originally resided in the expansion zone to alternative housing “before the property housing those residents is needed for Project development.” The University reaffirmed its commitment to do so in a statement following the meeting, saying it will not ask for eminent domain over residential buildings, though narrowing its promise to residences “while they are occupied,” as is also stated in the General Project Plan.

The adoption of the General Project Plan also allows for the transfer of city-owned underground space below the expansion site—from W. 125th Street to W. 133rd Street, bordered by Broadway and 12th Avenue—to the University through eminent domain. The eight-story underground area would include a bus depot, an energy center, and parking and loading facilities.

With the July 17 vote, Columbia committed to providing financial community benefits in addition to the $150 million promised in December in a “Memorandum of Understanding.” The University will bankroll several improvements to civic facilities and allow community access to some Manhattanville facilities. The General Project Plan also commits the University to a fund local scholarships, courses for community residents, and job training programs.

Public hearings regarding the possibility of eminent domain will take place on Tuesday and Thursday at 1 p.m. at the Aaron Davis Hall of the City College of New York, W. 135th Street at Convent Avenue.

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