Manhattanville expansion timeline

2003: Columbia University announces its plan to build a new 17-acre campus in Manhattanville that would span from 125th to 134th streets and from Broadway westward to the Hudson River.

Spring 2003: The Coalition to Preserve Community, a local activist group, begins to organize against Columbia’s expansion plans, mobilizing Harlem residents who contend that the expansion would be detrimental to the neighborhood by weakening community-owned businesses and making housing unaffordable, among other consequences.

Spring 2004: Columbia submits its initial rezoning 197-c plan to the City of New York. The proposal must go through the city’s Uniform Land Use Review Procedure, a city protocol for land use review, which involves votes by CB9, the City Planning Commission, and the New York City Council.

Fall 2004: Community Board 9, advised by the Harlem Community Development Corporation and the Pratt Center, completes its 197-a plan, an alternative to Columbia’s 197-c plan for its campus expansion. The 197-a plan includes a ban on eminent domain—the process by which the state can seize private property for “public use” in exchange for market-rate compensation—and recommends the negotiation of a Community Benefits Agreement, a memorandum which details how funds for the neighborhood in the footprint of the expansion will be allocated.

Early 2005: The City commits funds to the development of a Community Benefits Agreement, prompting discussion about the formation of a Local Development Corporation (LDC), an organization intended to represent a broad range of constituents and ensure communication to the public.

2006: Community Board 9, in consultation with local groups such as tenants’ and small business associations, selects 13 individuals to serve on the West Harlem Local Development Corporation. The LDC meets with University officials over a three-year period to develop the Community Benefits Agreement, which will ultimately determine how $150 million are allocated to the neighborhood.

August 2006: The Empire State Development Corporation—the state body that will later approve Columbia’s use of eminent domain—begins to conduct its blight study of the expansion site.

November 2006: The West Harlem Business Group, an unincorporated association of businesses, sues ESDC for refusing to disclose documents regarding a 2004 agreement between the ESDC and Columbia on seeking eminent domain for the Manhattanville campus.

November 16, 2007: Columbia’s Final Environmental Impact Statement is released, a qualitative report that analyzes the consequences of development on the physical, cultural, and socio-economic features of West Harlem.

December 19, 2007: The New York City Council approves Columbia’s 197-c plan, the final phase of the city’s seven-month long public review process.

August 20, 2007: Community Board 9, which represents West Harlem, strongly opposes Columbia’s expansion plans in a 31-2 vote, a decision which, though simply advisory, places pressure on Columbia to revise its plan by offering 10 specific conditions under which CB9 would have supported the plan.

July 17, 2008: ESDC declares Columbia’s proposed expansion footprint “blighted,” defined as a condition of disrepair beyond the potential for natural relief. This announcement grants authority to the state to invoke eminent domain on the properties of 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 land deals with the University.

July 17, 2008: ESDC directors announce that a second firm, Earth Tech, had been employed in the blight finding, after critics argued that there was collusion between ESDC, Columbia, and the state’s original firm—Allee King Rosen & Fleming—which had been simultaneously employed by Columbia.

September 25, 2008: The New York State Supreme Court dismisses a case Sprayregen brings against the city and Columbia, in which he argues that the city and the University had not employed outside experts to review the below-grade ground included in the expansion—a space that would run from 125th Street to 133rd Street and from Broadway to 12th Avenue and extend seven stories underground. This decision effectively validates the environmental review process for the University’s expansion.

December 18, 2008: ESDC approves the use of eminent domain in the University’s expansion site, eliminating the last procedural obstacle to construction.

January 21, 2009: Tuck-It-Away Storage owner Nick Sprayregen and gas station owners Gurnam and Parminder Singh file separate lawsuits with the New York State Supreme Court Appellate Division against ESDC. The suits challenge the state’s approval of using eminent domain to seize their properties.

May 4, 2009: Community Board 9 votes unanimously for its delegates on the West Harlem Local Development Corporation to turn down Columbia's Community Benefits Agreement for Manhattanville.

May 18, 2009: Despite CB9 opposition, the West Harlem Local Development Corporation and University Trustees sign the Community Benefits Agreement.

May 21, 2009: David Smith, attorney for the Singh family, and Norman Siegel, who represents Manhattanville storage facility owner Sprayregen, bring their case against the state at the New York State Supreme Court Appellate Division, where they question the legality of the Empire State Development Corporation’s use of eminent domain.

December 3, 2009: The New York State Supreme Court, Appellate Division declares in an unexpected 3-2 ruling that state seizure of private property in the 17-acre expansion zone is illegal. The harshly worded majority opinion written by Justice James Catterson calls the state’s blight study of the area “mere sophistry.”

December 14, 2009: Nearly 50 local residents march through the streets during a local rally at which they celebrate the recent state supreme court ruling, and call on University President Lee Bollinger and the ESDC not to appeal.

December 15, 2009: In a court case separate from the eminent domain legal battle, the New York State Court of Appeals rules unanimously that under the Freedom of Information Law, or FOIL, the ESDC must hand over documents to Sprayregen that it had refused to disclose to the West Harlem Business Group several years before, despite their repeated requests under FOIL to obtain the documents.

January 6, 2010: Senator Bill Perkins holds a hearing about the status of Columbia’s planned campus expansion, where he calls for the reformation of New York State’s Eminent Domain Procedure Law, a system which he says lacks transparency and requires more clearly defined terms.

January 8, 2010: ESDC formally appeals the New York State Supreme Court, Appellate Division’s decision on Dec. 3 that declared eminent domain illegal.

June 1, 2010: The Court of Appeals, New York State’s highest court, hears the oral arguments of both parties. The court’s decision will be announced several weeks or months following the case.

Correction: An earlier version of this timeline incorrectly listed 2002 as the time of the announcement of the Manhattanville plan, when in fact, University President Lee Bollinger only mentioned broadly in 2002 the need to expand, and the actual Manhattanville plan was not revealed until 2003. Spectator regrets the error.