With a final ruling on the legality of eminent domain in Manhattanville pending, University administrators say that at this time, they have no alternate plan to which they would turn if the verdict is not in their favor.
The New York State Supreme Court, Appellate Division recently dealt a major blow to Columbia’s planned campus expansion in the Manhattanville neighborhood of West Harlem with its ruling in December that eminent domain—state seizure of private property for the “public good” in exchange for market-rate compensation—is illegal in this case.
Administrators say there is no plan B if that ruling is upheld by the New York State Court of Appeals, which could mean the expansion would not happen at all without eminent domain. This excludes the preconstruction and demolition that has already begun for the planned Jerome L. Greene Science Center, which will be located on property the University owns.
Columbia controls most of the land in the 17-acre expansion zone, except for properties owned by two private landowners who have not struck deals with the University.
The Empire State Development Corporation, the state body that approved eminent domain for the project last December, formally appealed the decision in January and will present its oral arguments on June 1 alongside the respondents, who own the final properties in the expansion footprint: Tuck-It-Away Self-Storage owner Nick Sprayregen and gas station owners Gurnam Singh and Parminder Kaur.
“There is no plan B, and the reason for that is that in order to do something like this, you have to really just plunge ahead with the big plan and you have to make the best case you can for it,” University President Lee Bollinger said in a recent interview. In December, immediately after the Appellate Division ruling, Bollinger had said that the campus expansion might not happen at all without eminent domain.
With no plan B in mind, administrators emphasize that the remaining land they do not own is crucial for the University’s campus vision and the local environment.
Administrators argue that owning all the land in the expansion zone gives the University full access to a sprawling underground facility that would allow for below-grade deliveries, basement space, and parking, among other purposes. Joe Ienuso, executive vice president of facilities, said in a recent interview that from an environmental standpoint, owning all the properties would allow the project to improve the urban experience and streetscape by “widening streets, setting back buildings, central energy plant below grade, utility distribution below grade, fewer truck deliveries at grade, which also translates to fewer mobile source emissions from an air-quality perspective.”
The 2007 Environmental Impact Statement—part of the public review process for Manhattanville—reads, “The central below-grade service area is critical to meeting Columbia’s need for program space, and it would enhance the above-grade urban environment.” It adds, “This would avoid redundancy of equipment … and service space … that would occur if these facilities had to be provided above-grade in separate, unconnected buildings.”
When asked why the remaining properties—which represent about 9 percent of the planned expansion area—are essential, Ienuso said, “Have you seen the map? If you see the map, you don’t need to ask that question.”
He added, “Talking about anything on a percentage term is slightly misleading. If I said, I lost one finger, but I have 80 percent of my fingers on one hand, which one don’t I need? I don’t know—you pick, I’m not going to pick.”
Bollinger cited the importance of having above-ground a “sense of contiguous operations. We want to have the Mind, Brain, Behavior [building] interact with the School of the Arts,” he said, adding that for buildings such as the Mind, Brain, and Behavior building, there are a number of “interconnections” written into the blueprints that would be “harder to do without those properties.”
But according to legal experts, an alternative plan may be necessary, which is a task all the more daunting in a large, urban area already facing serious space constraints. Columbia Law School professor Lance Liebman referred to New York University’s expansion plans, which are particularly difficult in Greenwich Village, where opposition from local residents abounds. But, he said, NYU has come up with an alternative solution involving expansion not in the immediate area, but on a global scale instead.
“They need space, they know that in Greenwich Village they can’t expand a lot—you need a long-term plan, and for them it’s to put half of it [additional campuses] in foreign countries,” Liebman said. “These are large and interesting questions about when you have big universities that need more space, but it’s in a big city rather than in Princeton, N.J., or Palo Alto [Calif.], where there’s tons of land.”
Still, according to the attorneys representing the private landowners, no plan B has been discussed with them either.
“I don’t think anybody from Columbia or ESDC has had a conversation [with us] along those lines,” attorney Norman Siegel, who represents Sprayregen, said. “When Bollinger’s making those statements [that no plan B exists], I’m surprised at that kind of rhetoric, but we’re still focused on the issue we’ve been focused on from the beginning, which is the use of eminent domain.”
But several administrators say that no such speculation about a plan B is necessary for the time being, affirming their faith in the Court of Appeals, which has ruled in favor of eminent domain in the past.
Robert Kasdin, senior executive vice president of the University, added, “I have a lot of confidence in the New York State Court of Appeals—it’s a terrific court. The court is known across the country as an outstanding group of jurists.”
“That’s not to say a plan B couldn’t exist,” Bollinger said. “I just haven’t done that yet, and I’m not going to do it until it’s necessary.”
Maggie Astor contributed to this article.
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