The Empire State Development Corporation held its second round of hearings Thursday on Columbia’s General Project Plan for its Manhattanville campus expansion, considering in particular the possibility of the use of eminent domain there.
The two hearings Thursday at Aaron Davis Hall of City College took notice of testimony by community activists, residents, and Columbia students. Many community activists spoke out against the possibility of eminent domain in the area. In July, ESDC voted to adopt the University’s plan to build an expanded campus on 17 acres in Manhattanville.
The agency declared the area “blighted,” signaling authority for the state to invoke eminent domain for the remaining commercial properties there.
Former Community Board 9 Chair Maritta Dunn called for attention to inconveniences posed by ongoing construction. “These people, many of whom have raised their children and contributed to the stability of this neighborhood, have to live with the errors, oversights, and purposeful misjudgments of those who purport to have their interest in mind,” she said.
Nick Sprayregen, owner of Tuck-It-Away Self Storage and four properties within the expansion site, spoke against eminent domain use at the hearing. Sprayregen and his attorney, Norman Siegel, submitted thousands of pages of documents they obtained under the Freedom of Information Act from ESDC and other city agencies to the hearing’s record along with a record of Tuck-It-Away’s litigation with ESDC. Legal procedure mandates that eminent domain cases go straight to an appellate court, with the record of legal hearings, such as Thursday’s, constituting the record considered by the court, said Philip van Buren, a lawyer for Tuck-It-Away.
“The result that they will condemn properties has to do with not only how they do it, but the process of it, and what we show in this is incredible bad faith on a part of the government,” Sprayregen said after the hearing.
Several attendees offered testimony in favor of Columbia’s plan. One local resident, speaking through a Spanish translator, said Columbia has helped him organize a baseball league for local at-risk children. “We want Columbia to help us so we can keep improving ourselves and our neighborhood,” he said, drawing a contrast with local politicians, whom he said have not helped with funding.
But that opinion was not the consensus.
“If any entity involved in this process is rewarded without consideration and the concern demonstrated to all involved, we will have lost the opportunity to get it right this time,” Community Board 9 member Vicky Gholson said in testimony.
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