NYU's 2031 Plan

This evening Community Board 2 moderated the first public hearing on NYU's 2031 plan. The hearing was planned to happen at the NYU architecture building on LaGuardia Place but an overflowing crowd, kept out by fire regulations, made themselves known by banging on the windows and chanting. Nothing makes a very young man cringe like the political activism of people who could be his parents; I felt the character of my generation, embarrassed and yearning for some decorum during The Man's powerpoint presentation. 

The hearing was moved to the basement of Our Lady of Pompeii Church to make room for everyone. An unofficial count had the crowd at 500 people. There the NYU presenters did their best to be monotonous, for the success of the 2031 plan depends on boring the populace into acquiescence. And zoning laws can do that. But when the slides started sprouting buildings everyone came to life. 2031 calls for four gigantic buildings, all as tall as the tallest neighboring buildings, all promising at least twenty years of destruction, construction and no access to the public spaces that make the area a place to live. 

Still, NYU proposed the expansion of some public spaces and the inclusion of a public school and a playground in the proposed building where the Morton Williams supermarket is now, clear concessions to irate neighbors. But speaker after speaker invoked a rich history of NYU's alleged broken promises. They claimed the plan laid out is a best case scenario, that it's a deal with a university famously forgetful about nice things not notarized. "They lie. They lie. They lie" said a very sincere looking woman.

Worse, all of these buildings were shaded red with infringements on current zoning laws that ensure you can still see the sky with your head not tilted 90° up. "The rules exist for a reason" thumped Andrew Berman. If these buildings are built there will be less sky, less ground and less green. Several NYU professors claimed 2031 is no good for NYU; new buildings that will drive away NYU professors by destroying their quality of life is not the savviest way to attract new professors.

It's difficult to wage a fight against the new, one can seem huffy and reactionary and mired in the past. After all, NYU is a growing university and a center of culture and smart people, and it brings an awful lot of money to Greenwich Village. But the fact is that NYU doesn't need to perpetrate 2031 on the Village; the Financial District is clamoring for NYU development. The sites in question in there are two subway stops away from the rest of NYU's campus. Few people live in the Financial District, the place exists as a thing to be swallowed, a place validated by the disappearance of its public space. A park in the Financial District is fallow land, a failure of some colossal entity to claim that earth and that sky for its corporate might. It's a place for NYU. Stop it from building more in Greenwich Village, for its own sake.