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Letter Asking City To Encourage New York Univerity to Expand In Areas Not Already Burdened
March 8, 2006
Dear Mayor Bloomberg:
Recently, a number of prominent local organizations have called upon the City to assist New York University to site new educational facilities in parts of the city that may benefit from such development. The Greenwich Village Block Associations (GVBA) agrees with the assessment made by these community groups regarding NYU’s negative impact on our neighborhoods and concurs with the proposal that the city should play an active role in encouraging NYU to focus elsewhere for its future building projects.
The letter sent to your office by the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, the Greenwich Village Community Task Force, the Cooper Square Committee, the Noho Neighborhood Association, the Coalition to Save the East Village, the St. Ann’s Committee and the Union Square Community Coalition accurately represents the observations, sentiments and desires of Village residents.
Unfortunately, NYU’s building mania as well as some of its policies has made the university distrusted and reviled in a community that values higher education and regrets that our relationship with this large institution is fraught with tension and continual strife. Entreaties by beleaguered communities have had no discernable effect upon NYU’s expansion imperatives nor are they likely to do so. Therefore, it seems the only possibility to stem the continuing “NYU-ization” of Greenwich Village and nearby areas is “municipal intervention.”
NYU is the largest private university in the country, ironically, sited in a community celebrated for its historic ambiance and low population density. The inherent conflict created by NYU’s desire to grow and the community’s need for self-preservation is self evident and ongoing. Something must be done to change this equation if we are to preserve the prized character of a neighborhood that also serves as an economic engine for the city.
The City’s policy allowed the University to expand, citing the benefits in terms of jobs, cultural activity and prestige without sufficient consideration of how this expansion negative impacts our neighborhoods and which in the long term also works to the detriment of the City. Even when NYU’s presence is not evident in various community issues, there is widespread suspicion that the university uses its considerable “behind the scenes clout” to influence the City’s decisions, particularly, when they run counter to community consensus. The GVBA requests that the City begin actively encouraging NYU to build new facilities outside of communities that feel besieged, threatened and overwhelmed by its policies and construction projects.NYU’s presence and influence is becoming an increasingly heavy burden and in order for this community to achieve minimal relief, it is essential that the City play a committed role in encouraging the university to find other places to build new facilities and exert its considerable influence.
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