Preparations for construction of a new athletics center and park space have begun at Baker Field after months of community meetings, City Council debates and a spot of controversy.
A City Council vote on April 6 gave Columbia the green light to begin work on its plans for the Campbell Sports Center, which will include coaches’ offices, a student-athlete study center, an auditorium, and meeting spaces in addition to training facilities. Columbia’s plans also include the creation of the Boathouse Marsh, which will include a public waterfront park.
Perhaps more important to Inwood residents, however, was that the Council’s April 6 vote gave Columbia a 90 percent waiver of waterfront zoning laws, allowing Columbia to devote only 1.5 percent of its land to public waterfront access instead of the required 15 percent. That led residents and local elected officials to call for a community benefits agreement from the University.
The battle to determine those benefits included a deadlocked vote by Community Board 12, which covers Inwood and Washington Heights, and a public spat between City Council members Robert Jackson and Ydanis Rodriguez about the timing of the final City Council vote and community involvement in the negotiation process.
University President Lee Bollinger said in a recent interview that he had signed the agreement—which includes provisions for extended local access to facilities for the community; educational programs and scholarships; funding for local parks; and resolution of concerns related to traffic, construction, disruptive stadium lighting, and maintenance.
The agreement includes many of the benefits listed in an online petition, created by the local activist group Advocates for Inwood Manhattan, which garnered 545 signatures.
Susan Ryan, an AIM member, said she and other AIM members would be meeting with elected officials this week to discuss the agreement, which in their opinion is not finalized despite Columbia’s announcement April 26 that it had already signed the agreement.
“The items the University has committed to provide have various dates that are specifically spelled out within the Partnership Agreement.
We moved forward to begin work on fulfilling some of the items in the Agreement before it was signed by President Bollinger,” Columbia senior public affairs officer Victoria Benitez wrote in an statement. “We will continue to work closely with the community and elected officials to ensure that members of the public and university community can realize the shared benefits of the new Boathouse Marsh environmental area and of the Baker athletic facilities.”
A University spokesperson said that Columbia has already responded to some community demands, including erecting a more aesthetically-pleasing fence and hedges around the Baker Field property, providing 13 more sports camp scholarships than before for a total of 32 scholarships, providing 3,000 free Columbia football tickets for this fall, and beginning the installation of remote control lighting for all playing fields.
But some residents say that isn’t enough, arguing that there are still unresolved issues with the current agreement—for example, naming a community signatory to represent the community and carry out the terms of the agreement and a clause suggesting that the University be the final arbiter in case of dispute over the agreement—and that University communication has been frustrating.
“We had to read in the newspaper that Baker Field construction was starting; we didn’t hear about if from Columbia directly, despite the fact that community construction meetings are a part of the Community Partnership Agreement,” Ryan said.
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