The University’s Manhattanville expansion plan faced a setback this year after a state court declared eminent domain for the project illegal in December. This surprise ruling, which will send the case to New York’s highest court in June, has significantly raised the stakes of this protracted legal battle.
The New York State Supreme Court, Appellate Division declared in December in a 3-2 decision that eminent domain—the process by which the state can seize private property for “public use” in exchange for market-rate compensation—in the 17-acre expansion zone is illegal, dealing a blow to the University’s long-term plans. It was an unexpected victory for Tuck-It-Away Self-Storage owner Nick Sprayregen and gas station owners Gurnam Singh and Parminder Kaur, the last private landowners in the expansion area who have not struck deals with the University.
The Empire State Development Corporation—the state body that approved eminent domain for the project in December 2008—appealed the decision in January to the New York State Court of Appeals, which will hear the case on June 1.
In the interim between the December ruling and the June appeal, the plaintiffs and respondents have been exchanging legal briefs. These briefs have honed in on, among other things, previous eminent domain cases whose legal precedents could be a bellwether for the upcoming case. Of particular interest is the November 2009 Goldstein v. New York State Urban Development Corporation case, in which the Court of Appeals ruled in favor of eminent domain for the Atlantic Yards commercial development in Brooklyn.
The respondents in the Manhattanville Court of Appeals case—Sprayregen, represented by attorney Norman Siegel, and Singh and Kaur, represented by attorney David Smith—have sought to draw distinctions between the two cases. They cite as important differences hundreds of pages of documents they submitted to the court outlining an affirmative alternative to ESDC’s vision of the area as “blighted”—defined as a condition of disrepair beyond the potential for natural relief. They also argue that “collusion” allegedly occurred when ESDC hired the consulting firm AKRF, which was also working for the University, to evaluate whether the neighborhood was blighted. These circumstances, the respondents say, were not present in Atlantic Yards, and thus make for two very different lawsuits.
Though University administrators would not speak to comparisons between Manhattanville and Atlantic Yards, some legal experts noted strong similarities between the two cases and said that the Atlantic Yards verdict could be important for the upcoming Manhattanville case.
“I would be surprised if Judge Catterson’s decision stands up to the state level,” Julia Vitullo-Martin, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute think tank, said, referring to Justice James Catterson’s majority opinion in December’s Appellate Division ruling.
Robert Kasdin, senior executive vice president of the University, said only, “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.”
But should the Court of Appeals uphold the Appellate Division’s decision, administrators could have to go back to the drawing board, which could pose a problem for the expansion project in the long term. At this time, University officials say, they have no alternative plan if eminent domain is again ruled illegal.
Administrators emphasized that the remaining land they do not own is crucial for Columbia’s campus vision and the local environment. They say that a “checkerboard” development with non-University buildings scattered throughout would preclude the possibility of an integrated campus with a sprawling underground facility that would allow for below-grade deliveries, basement space, and parking, among other things.
“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 expansion might not happen at all without eminent domain.
But others say that an alternative plan is necessary—which may be easier said than done in an urban area already impeded by space constraints, according to legal experts. Columbia Law School professor Lance Liebman referred to New York University’s expansion plans, which have been 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.”
Meanwhile, an ongoing controversy was reignited in April regarding property Columbia already owns on Broadway and 125th Street, currently leased out to the popular Cuban restaurant Floridita.
Columbia temporarily shut down the restaurant for necessary kitchen floor repair work, but whether it will reopen in full in its current location remains uncertain, since—as owner Ramon Diaz and University officials confirmed—they are close to sealing the deal for a new location for Floridita. Both parties have said they are waiting on the other to sign the lease.
Though University officials maintain that Diaz was made aware well in advance that this temporary shutdown would be necessary because of the damage to the kitchen floor, Diaz said on the day of the closure, “It’s not so much me, but the 30-plus families that are living off this work. This has real impact on real lives.”
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