Courtesy of N.Y.U. An illustration of a revised development plan by N.Y.U., which includes the construction of a new 14-story building at Bleecker Street and LaGuardia Place.

At a crowded public meeting in Grace Church’s Tuttle Hall Monday night, Greenwich Village greeted New York University’s revised core expansion plan with its own version of a Bronx cheer.

Since withdrawing the proposal to add a fourth tower to the landmarked Silver Towers site, the university has consistently said that it could create some 2 million square feet of new usage in the Washington Square district by developing sites it already owned. The audience seemed surprised, nevertheless, that the university had not looked elsewhere.

A slide presentation by university spokeswoman Alicia Hurley was greeted by hostile interruptions, catcalls and hisses as it became clear that the square footage lost through the cancellation of the so-called “Silver Sliver” had been redistributed to the Morton Williams supermarket site and the block-length “zipper building” on Mercer Street between Bleecker Street and West Houston.

The university has undertaken to donate the bottom seven floors of a new 14-story building at the Morton Williams location to the city for use as a public school. The rest of the building will house almost 200 university students. Existing plans for the “zipper building” have been bulked up to include the hotel development originally planned for the Silver Towers site.
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Kim Davis.

It’s understandable, to me anyway, that East Village residents are concerned about NYU’s ambitious expansion plans and how they will affect the architecture and ambience of a treasured neighborhood. After all, it was the East Village which was landed with the enormous Founder’s Hall dormitory on East 12th Street, and although NYU might consider University Hall on East 14th Street part of the Union Square neighborhood, it supplies a steady stream of student revelers to the avenues running downtown from that location and into the heart of the East Village.

Even so, I read Rob Hollander’s post today on Save the Lower East Side with some puzzlement. “East Villagers ought to be alarmed by NYU’s decision not to build on its own campus,” he writes.

That’s something which might well give rise to concern, but as The Local recently reported – and even the The Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation agrees – that’s not the decision which has been made at all. As the preservation group put it, “NYU is insisting that they will move ahead with seeking permission to build on the adjacent non-landmarked supermarket site instead.” In other words, the university is at this time pressing ahead with its original core plan.

Nobody can deny that the East Village may have plenty to worry about further down the road if the core plan does fail, but that hasn’t yet happened. So far, we are still chasing shadows. One irony which Rob Hollander’s post does highlight is that success in opposing the university’s plans for the Washington Square campus is indeed likely to have repercussions for other neighborhoods.

Kim Davis is the community editor of The Local East Village.

When New York University announced that it was abandoning a proposal to build a fourth structure on the Silver Towers site, it changed the direction of its expansion plan.

Activists opposing New York University’s “2031 Plan” for expansion won’t have the “Silver Sliver” to kick around anymore.

That was the news yesterday afternoon as the university announced it would not be filing with the Landmarks Preservation Commission for approval to build the tower, which would have been the tallest building ever constructed on Bleecker Street. Although criticism of the tower had come from many quarters, the death blow seems to have been the hostility of internationally renowned architect I.M. Pei, responsible for the design of the three buildings already on the landmarked Silver Towers site. In news accounts, the proposed tower was disparagingly nicknamed the Silver Sliver.
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Rhea Mahbubani John Penley.

John Penley’s circuitous journey to the world of community activism in New York City began with a single question.

It was 1984 and Mr. Penley had just finished a year in jail after charges arising from his role in a protest at a South Carolina nuclear plant.

“When I got out of custody, they gave me a $100 bill and a bus ticket and asked me where I wanted to go,” recalls Mr. Penley, who is 59. “I said New York and that was it.”
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Tania Barnes The facade of St. Ann’s church still stands in front of NYU’s 26-story dorm on East 12th Street.

What began with an objection to what critics called outsized development on Third and Fourth Avenues in the East Village culminated today with a unanimous vote by City Council to approve new zoning legislation that will cap development in the area at 120 feet, or roughly 12 stories.

Neighborhood preservation groups, working with Community Board 3 and local elected officials, have been pushing for years to change the height restrictions in the area from practically unlimited to something they believe is more in keeping with the neighborhood’s character. Supporters say the new legislation will also give developers in the area more incentives to put up residential buildings (including affordable housing), rather than more dorms and hotels.
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Tania Barnes Under the proposed legislation, this 26-story NYU dorm on East 12th Street would be too tall by half.

In the latest turf battle, it looks like the preservationists are winning.

City Council is set to vote today – and expected to approve — a measure that will cap building heights at 120 feet or roughly 12 stories on the eight blocks between Third and Fourth Avenues and 13th and Ninth Streets. That’s a pretty major shift: under current regulations, the area has practically no height restrictions. (For a case in point, look no further than the NYU dorm on East 12th Street, at 26 stories.)

Originally, the Department of City Planning considered the area, with its wide avenues, better able to accommodate tall buildings, and therefore chose to leave it out of the rezoning plans that affected the rest of the East Village in 2008. That rezoning capped buildings at 75 feet along the streets, 85 feet along avenues, and 120 feet along Houston Street.

But in September, city planning officials changed their tune, agreeing to support building caps for Third and Fourth Avenues. It’s not altogether clear what prompted the change of heart. A spokeswoman for the Department of City Planning would not elaborate on the motives for the reversal. But the support of Councilwoman Rosie Mendez and the continuous campaigns of groups like the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation have undoubtedly played a role.

For preservationists, the failure to include this region in the 2008 rezoning was always an omission and so they don’t necessarily view the pending legislation as a win. Rather, they see it as merely getting the area up to the zoning standards that apply elsewhere. In an interview with The Local, Andrew Berman of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation called the new legislation “a compromise of a compromise.” The preservation group, he said, had hoped the building cap would be set at 85 feet, 35 feet less than what was ultimately agreed upon.

The new zoning laws will also theoretically raise the allowable height of residential buildings in the area by increasing what’s called their floor-to-area ratio. Still, Berman says the preservation group is happy with the change: “The advantage of that is if there’s going to be new development, it will be more residential. Right now, new development is all dorms and hotels.”

What do you think about the proposal to limit building heights in the East Village?

My report on New York University’s expansion plans and implications for the East Village, which at this stage remain frankly unclear, drew extra attention, doubtless because this is one of those curious cases of a news source reporting on itself.

More or less, anyway. As our banner makes clear, The Local East Village is produced by NYU’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute (in collaboration with The Times). Could NYU report on its own controversial development strategy without bias? This was the focus of commentary by Tom McGeveran at Capital, a New York news website which was covering the story before we were even launched. “How’d they do?” he asked, answering, “I don’t detect any bias in the piece.”

It’s a curious feeling to be under such close scrutiny, and maybe it’s worth repeating that I’m working for The Local as a consultant to the Journalism Institute rather than as an employee of the university (or the Times) and with an assurance of complete editorial independence on stories about the university. Skeptics might expect nothing else, but I may as well say that the university was entirely hands-off in the development of the piece.

On the one hand, it’s important to see the story as the beginning of The Local’s reporting on the plans and not any kind of conclusive summary. At the same time, covering the story highlighted for me one of the challenges facing hyperlocal news coverage. Some of the people I spoke to for the story told me they didn’t really have much to say about NYU’s plans as they affect the East Village – the main focus, after all, being the neighborhood around the existing Greenwich Village campus. Commenting on the story, Andrew Nusca of SmartPlanet.com wanted to put the story in the broader context of contentious developments uptown by Columbia University, and beyond that to encroachments by “any large institution of higher education that’s located within a major city.”

That’s certainly a story and someone should write it. Our remit, however, is to cover the East Village – hyperlocally. It’s difficult when a story spills naturally across neighborhood boundaries – which are, after all, largely an invention of habit and realtors. But readers can expect further, unbiased reporting here if and when we learn more about NYU’s intentions for our particular backyard.

Kim Davis is the community editor of The Local East Village.

This image from NYU’s 2031 expansion plan depicts a proposed tower near Houston and Mercer Streets. It is still unclear how the plan will affect the East Village.

New York University’s so-called “2031 plan” for expansion contains detailed proposals for what it calls its “Core” around Washington Square. What concerns many East Village residents is a larger boundary that the university has drawn around the Core.

University officials call it “the Neighborhood,” and on maps published about the expansion plan it clearly contains the East Village. The Neighborhood figures in the university’s long-term plans, but the specifics remain unknown.

“We can’t live in a world where everything is no, no, no.” That’s New York University spokeswoman Alicia Hurley’s reaction to the welcome she received from the East Village’s Community Board 3.

“We have heard you, and we’re very conscious of your concerns. Our most recent dorm purchase was at 23rd and Third, well outside the Neighborhood.” But in response to discussions with East Village residents she says, “Help us to understand which areas are most sensitive. Are there sites which are under-performing. Are certain types of use acceptable?”

She wonders whether an extension of the Tisch School of the Arts would be welcome in the area. “If you want to just say no, and be afraid, there’s not much I can do. We’re happy for you to coach us.”

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