Columbia’s campus expansion in Manhattanville has spurred urban planning, protest marches, and now a flurry of lawsuits.
Tuck-It-Away Storage’s Nick Sprayregen—the neighborhood’s second largest property owner after the University—has filed a total of six Manhattanville-related suits over the past few months. He is one of two owners still resisting a deal to move out of the project zone.
Some cases share a common aim, while others are geared towards distinct ends. Five of Sprayregen’s lawsuits have correlated with requests made through the Freedom Of Information Law, a means by which Sprayregen and his lawyer, Norman Siegel, seek factual support to keep Tuck-It-Away in Manhattanville despite Columbia’s development there.
In July, the state of New York deemed the area “blighted”—beyond a condition of organic economic renewal—which means that the land is a candidate for eminent domain, the state’s power to seize private property for the public good. In this case, the land would go to Columbia. Sprayregen and Siegel have been vocal opponents of eminent domain in Manhattanville, both in community hearings and in the courtroom.
To help determine whether to invoke eminent domain in Manhattanville, the state agency responsible for the decision—the Empire State Development Corporation—requested testimony from community members, local politicians, and Columbia affiliates. Though the deadline was scheduled for Oct. 10, Siegel said, “We still believe that we don’t have all the documents we’re entitled to.” He subsequently won a court case—his fifth lawsuit—to keep the record for testimony open until Thursday, Oct. 16.
On Thursday, Siegel will be back in court arguing for access to the FOIL documents he and Sprayregen requested, so they can add them to the record of testimony to the state.
“Without those documents being placed into the record, Tuck-it-Away could not effectively and fairly raise their objections to the taking of their property through eminent domain,” Siegel said.
Siegel would like 10 days to review the FOIL documents once he receives them, so he said he hopes that the deadline for ESDC testimony can be extended until Oct. 26.
“The University is not a party to this litigation and cannot comment,” Columbia spokesperson Victoria Benitez said when reached on Sunday.
The sixth lawsuit in the Sprayregen-Siegel portfolio—which raised environmental concerns with the Manhattanville campus project—was dismissed by the New York State Supreme Court in late September. This case validated the environmental review process that vetted the geological impact of University development in Manhattanville.
In her decision, Justice Jane Solomon found that New York City “gave due consideration to pertinent environmental factors,” and called Sprayregen and Siegel’s allegations “specious.”
Ramon Diaz, who owns Floridita Restaurant and Tapas Bar at the corner of 125th Street and Broadway, might add another case to the Manhattanville pile.
With the lawsuit, which he and his lawyer began to draft over the summer, Diaz would seek to avoid the termination of his lease on the tapas bar, which he rents from Columbia. The lease was established on a year-by-year basis, but the University recently changed it to operate on a month-by-month basis.
Since then, University officials have added three 30-day extensions to the original date on which they had threatened to terminate the restaurant’s lease. Shortly before that date, Diaz had a meeting with a University attorney, where he stated that he was considering a lawsuit.
Diaz explained that he had not yet filed the suit, did not want to do so, and only would if all other negotiation attempts on the lease fail.
As seven lawsuits pile in the Manhattanville stack, the University says it continues to reach mutually acceptable deals with property holdouts in the campus project area. All await the state’s decision on eminent domain, which is expected in December.
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