BY LINCOLN ANDERSON | New York University last week agreed to extend the deadline for the city to decide whether it wants a new 100,000-square-foot public school on a university-owned site at the southeast corner of Bleecker St. and LaGuardia Place.
The date for the city’s School Construction Authority to “opt in” and green-light the school project was fast approaching — the end of this year. But on Mon., Oct. 21, Lynne Brown, N.Y.U.’s senior vice president, wrote to City Councilmember Margaret Chin, who represents the district, telling her that the university had increased the timeframe.
“N.Y.U. will extend the current deadline — December 31, 2014 — to December 31, 2018,” Lynne wrote Chin. “This would seem to provide S.C.A. with ample opportunity — within its 5-year capital plan — in which to make a decision about the inclusion of the Bleecker St. site. The extension is given with the understanding that if the S.C.A. does indicate to the university that it intends to move forward with the project, it must start construction by July 31, 2020 (so that all parties can have certainty about the site’s future).
“All the other elements of the prior agreement as memorialized in the Restrictive Declaration remain as before,” Brown wrote, “including: If the S.C.A. does choose to build, the below-grade space will be available for N.Y.U. … If the S.C.A. chooses not to build or does not decide by the deadline, the parcel will revert to N.Y.U. (with the understanding that any new building must hold 25,000 square feet of above-grade space for community purposes).”
As for why the university space would be belowground, it was initially to be sited on top of the school or community space, but C.B. 2 objected to the idea of a university dorm being on top of an elementary school.
Brown also, at the start of her letter to Chin, thanked the councilmember “for staying in touch…so regularly” with her since Brown last wrote her on the subject in May.
In a statement to The Villager, Chin said, “Our community called for this deadline to be extended, and I’m proud to have worked closely with N.Y.U. to make sure the university answered that call. This extension will provide the School Construction Authority with an additional four years to consider siting a new public school on Bleecker St., and S.C.A. has made it clear to me that they feel it is enough time to a make a fully informed decision on that matter. I will also continue to urge S.C.A. to ultimately decide in favor of building a new Bleecker St. school.”
Asked what, in the end, compelled N.Y.U. to modify the agreement and add the four years, Alicia Hurley, the university’s vice president for government affairs and community engagement, said, in a statement, that it was Chin.
“The decision to postpone the Bleecker building deadline was a reflection of the university’s working relationship with the councilwoman,” Hurley said. “It was due to the ongoing conversations we were having with the councilwoman and the fact that the original deadline for a S.C.A. decision was upon us.”
However, with the deadline for the S.C.A.’s decision on the school looming, Community Board 2 also had been pushing extremely hard to extend the opt-in date. The community board’s Schools and Education Committee, co-chaired by Heather Campbell and Jeannine Kiely, strongly and unanimously endorsed a resolution citing the clear need for a 600-seat Bleecker school and calling on N.Y.U. to amend its restrictive declaration to extend the option for funding and constructing the school.
At C.B. 2’s full board meeting last week, three days after the news of N.Y.U.’s decision had been announced, Kiely read the committee’s updated resolution, which “acknowledges, applauds and supports” the university’s decision to open the restrictive declaration. But the resolution continued, C.B. 2 urges N.Y.U. to move the date for both the opt-in date for the school and the start of its construction back to 2025, “which was N.Y.U.’s original proposal.”
Nevertheless, David Gruber, C.B. 2 chairperson, declared, “This was a major, major, major victory. We opened up something we thought couldn’t open — we’re hoping to open it a little more.”
Bolstering its argument, the committee had compiled a special report, released on Oct. 15, “Bleecker School: Timing and Demographic Analysis,” making the case for the school’s need.
The report noted that under the original agreement, dating back to January 2012 — as part of the ULURP (Uniform Land Use Review Procedure) for the “N.Y.U. Core Plan” — S.C.A. had the option for a 100,000-square-foot school on the Bleecker site, with the deadline for the decision not expiring until 2025. If the public school ultimately wasn’t built, then N.Y.U. would take back the 100,000 square feet.
However, when the ULURP application for the university’s “N.Y.U. 2031” superblocks expansion project was finally approved by the City Council in July 2012, the agreement on the possible public school had changed radically: Now, the deadline to build the school was cut back to 10 years earlier — the end of 2014 — with construction mandated to begin by July 1, 2018. And if the school wasn’t built in the end, then N.Y.U. would again get back the 100,000 square feet, but — in a new addition to the agreement — the university would now make its “best efforts” to lease 25,000 square feet to a community facility, to be determined.
Campbell and Kiely’s committee, in their report, explained why the public school is needed, including a “significant growth in the under-5 population and birth rate, expansion of universal pre-K, rapid pace of residential construction (particularly of family-sized apartments), need for District 75 (special education) seats, and reduction in class in size to comply with Contract for Excellence laws.”
In short, the report stated: “There is a strong demographic case to build the Bleecker school. We just need more time!”
The site is currently occupied by the Morton Williams supermarket. A supermarket would be included somewhere else in N.Y.U.’s superblocks plan, though exactly where isn’t immediately clear. Previously, the market had been slated for the planned new “Zipper Building,” on the site of the current Coles gym, on Mercer St.
The committee’s report noted, furthermore, that, “In the 1960s, N.Y.U. promised to build an elementary school for neighborhood children where the Coles Sports Center is today.”
More recently, the report also noted that there has been a continuing shifting landscape on the school. In 2010, the report notes, N.Y.U. promised to build the core and shell of a new 600-seat public school somewhere on the university’s South Village superblocks; then, in January 2012, N.Y.U. pledged to provide land for free to S.C.A. to build a new school on the Bleecker site, but the option would expire in 2025; then, in July 2012, in the final zoning agreement, N.Y.U. still agreed to provide the land for free for the new school, but the option would now expire on Dec. 31, 2014.
Two new area public elementary schools are already planned, including one in the base of a planned residential tower by Trinity Real Estate, at Canal St. and Sixth Ave., and the Foundling School, on W. 16th St., plus a new middle school at 75 Morton St. But demographic trends point to the need for more seats, the committee report notes. Currently, all three of C.B. 2’s elementary schools are overcapacity: P.S. 3 is at 111 percent, P.S. 41 is at 124 percent, and P.S. 130 is at 104 percent capacity.
Plus, getting free land for a new school on Bleecker St. is simply too good an offer to pass up, in that it’s worth an estimated $50 million, according to real estate experts, the report says.
As for why the Department of Education, S.C.A.’s umbrella agency, didn’t include the Bleecker St. site in its current five-year capital plan, a D.O.E. spokesperson did not respond by press time.
As for why, during the review of the N.Y.U. ULURP application, the 2025 school opt-in deadline was allowed to be cut back to 2014 — during the final negotiations at the City Council level — this was, according to a Chin spokesperson, done “to prevent the site sitting vacant for a very long time before being put to community use.”
In fact, the spokesperson said, Chin has been working throughout the year to extend the deadlines for the school. Chin wrote to Brown this March 31, to which the N.Y.U. senior V.P., on May 6, responded that, due to “pending litigation and appeals” over the N.Y.U. 2031 plan, the university felt it was “not an appropriate time” to modify the restrictive declaration and “may be imprudent to do so.”
However, on Oct. 14, the community plaintiffs’ earlier victory in court was overturned at the Appellate Division, which ruled that the full, four-building, nearly 2-million-square-foot project could proceed. A week later, Brown wrote to Chin, saying that the university would extend the deadline for the school.
The N.Y.U. 2031 plaintiffs plan to take the case to the Court of Appeals.
