A nameless gas station at 619 125th St. and another on 12th Avenue across from the Cotton Club stand with peeling paint, in the project zone for Columbia’s Manhattanville expansion.
Together they comprise the livelihood of Gurnam Singh and his wife Parminder Kaur, who have owned the stations for almost 25 years. Now, the Singh family is one of the last two holdouts in the University’s negotiations to acquire all the land for their future campus site.
The Singhs won’t budge. As Kaur explained, ever since they moved to the United States from India in the early eighties, their businesses have been their way “to live the American Dream.”
Over two decades ago, Singh and his older brother Puramjit arrived in Queens, where they started out managing a gas station. “He came with very struggling times,” Kaur said of her husband. At the time, she was married to Puramjit, who sent for her once the brothers were settled in the states. Not long after, he was killed in a robbery at the Queens station. Some time later, Kaur married Gurnam.
The Singhs never had full ownership of the station in Queens, and in the mid-eighties they went into business in Manhattanville. Their lawyer, David Smith, noted that the couple has watched the neighborhood change over the years. “When they first became a part of it, it was a much more dangerous place to be,” Smith said. “Their working there at night was difficult.”
But, he explained, “This is all that they have, are these two stations.”
Until now, the family has kept quiet on Columbia’s Manhattanville expansion and the University’s desire to acquire their land (over 10,000 square feet in all). But now. Kaur said, things have changed.
Their kids—a 16-year-old daughter and 13-year-old son—are older now, she said, and over time, property negotiations have taken a toll on their family. Gurnam was hospitalized for 18 days due to exhaustion in January, and Kaur was diagnosed in March with stress-related shingles—maladies the Singhs chalk up to dealing with the University. Kaur said she and her husband have trouble sleeping at night and that her children are “very scared.”
Smith and the Singhs last met with Columbia officials on August 18, Smith said, explaining that the University has made several offers that the couple felt were “not in the realm of possibility.” He added that “They [the University] have put dollar amounts on the stations,” and though he wouldn’t reveal the amounts, Smith said, “We don’t think those dollar amounts are adequate.”
The University also presented the possibility of a land swap—a solution that worked in the most recent holdout case involving Anne Whitman’s Hudson North American Storage company. Smith said that although Columbia officials did not make a formal offer, they did suggest the possibility of a property in Jamaica, Queens.
“At a point, they had brought in comparable stations, or stations in Queens which were—my clients were totally insulted, to tell you the truth,” Smith said, adding that the outer-borough space “doesn’t have a comparable value.”
Smith noted that the original Manhattanville campus plan included the Cotton Club property, but that it was dropped after community members spoke out against losing the beloved jazz haunt. He and his clients suggested to the University that, since the 12th Avenue Singh Station is across from the club, Columbia should just “lop off that little piece and let us stay.” But, Smith said: “They never really responded to that. They never took that seriously.”
The latest Manhattanville controversy, the possibility that the state could seize commercial properties in the project footprint and give them to Columbia via eminent domain, has “always been there” in negotiations, according to Smith. “It’s always been said, ‘Well, you better do something before September because in September we’re going to have hearings and at that point it’s out of the bag and this is how we’re going. And you’ll get less out of eminent domain than what we’re offering you,” he recalled. Smith said that they have never spoken directly about eminent domain, but that he has sensed it as “a threat.”
“We reject completely the characterizations of our negotiations,” University spokesperson Victoria Benitez wrote in an e-mail.
Kaur said that she would be willing to strike a deal with Columbia if she was offered one of its gas stations in the neighborhood. The University owns the nearby Shell and Mobil stations, according to Benitez, but Smith said that the University has “never been close” to making a proposal his clients found acceptable.
“We have, in fact, offered a range of specific sites including a site in the immediate vicinity of the current gas stations,” Benitez said in an e-mail. “As has been our practice in working to reach agreements with many other business owners in the project area, we have offered an array of options.”
betsy.morais@columbiaspectator.com
