No to Corp. U! A massive demonstration against greedy, out-of-control corporations is planned in Washington Square Park on Tues., Sept. 1, from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. No, the targets won’t be Walmart, Chevron, Monsanto or others that typically top the lists of worst corporations — but the Village’s universities: N.Y.U., the Cooper Union and the New School. The “Rally and March Against the Corporate University” will bring together what its organizers are calling an unprecedented coalition of students, professors, labor and community members and local groups. There will also be a performance by the cast of “STOMP!” More specifically, the anti-corporate confab is being described as a “rally to save the Village, save our parks, and stop wasting our tuition on bad labor practices, unwanted development and reckless real estate expansion.” Among the rally’s endorsers are N.Y.U. Faculty Against the Sexton Plan, N.Y.U.’s Student Labor Action Movement (SLAM); the Committee to Save Cooper Union; N.Y.U.’s Graduate Student Organizing Committee (GSOC); Whose N.Y.U.?; Coalition for Fair Labor; Roosevelt Institute; Union of Clerical, Adminstrative and Technical (UCATS) at N.Y.U.; the N.Y.U. adjuncts and New School part-time faculty union (ACT-UAW Local 7902); Washington Square South Citizens Action Committee; Community Action Alliance on N.Y.U. 2031 (CAAN 2031); the Soho Alliance and more. It will start off with a rally in the park by the Garibaldi statue, with speakers and a performance by “STOMP!” Things will then climax with a march down to the Coles Sports Center, the N.Y.U. gym on Mercer St. that is slated to be replaced by the university’s new “Zipper Building.” Following the Court of Appeals’s ruling in June that the N.Y.U. 2031 development project can proceed, the university now plans to close Coles this fall and tear it down soon after. Speakers will address a range of issues, from the destruction of open spaces (the N.Y.U. plan will close four park strips along the project’s edges for years) to student debt (some students are even selling their bodies to afford the astronomical tuition); “Wall Street’s stranglehold on U.S. higher education”; faculty exploitation; and schools with global ambitions forming partnerships with foreign regimes (did someone say Abu Dhabi?) that grossly violate human rights. At more than $70,000 a year, N.Y.U. is now the nation’s most expensive university, according to the organizers. Mark Crispin Miller, N.Y.U. professor of media, culture and communication, said, “N.Y.U. is now an institution driven not by a concern for education, but by an elite financial calculus that ends up hurting all of us in many ways: the students, faculty and staff within the school itself, as well as its long-suffering neighbors. What’s happening at NYU is indicative of a nation-wide trend that has turned institutions of higher learning into profit-driven corporations.” However, calling FASP unfair, John Beckman, the university’s spokesperson, responded, “The simple reality is that N.Y.U. is successfully improving financial aid, reducing student debt, recruiting talented students and faculty, expanding research, prudently and successfully managing our budget and finances, and carefully planning for the university’s future. The portrait FASP attempts to paint is at odds with the facts, and is neither true nor fair.”
Got the story wrong? The architect hired to design a proposal for the new facade of One if by Land, Two if by Sea, the popular Barrow St. restaurant, might be in a conflict of interest. Anita Brandt presented plans for a new storefront to Community Board 2’s Landmarks Committee last week, but not before she recused herself from voting on the issue — since she is a C.B. 2 member on the committee. The restaurant ripped down its decorative plaster arch without a permit last month. The new proposal, which called for a different look incorporating the underlying cast-iron beams, was swiftly voted down by the other committee members. But after the committee meeting, Brandt, on the recommendation of C.B. 2 Chairperson Tobi Bergman, called the city’s Conflict of Interest Board to see whether it was kosher for her to represent the restaurant. She told The Villager on Wednesday that the lawyers there instructed her to write a formal letter, but they haven’t made a decision yet, despite an article on DNAinfo New York claiming otherwise. “That was news to me,” Brandt said in a phone call yesterday, adding that she won’t do anything before COIB responds. “Not without a ruling, no, absolutely not,” she said. “I met with the Landmarks Preservation Commission today, and until I get a definitive answer I’m not going to quit anything. I’ll see whether they agree to it and, if not, whether I can have someone else present the proposal.” The application for the proposal has already been submitted to L.P.C. and is scheduled to be presented at the commission’s next public hearing on Tues., Sept. 8. Brandt was hired by the restaurant after the facade had already been removed and said she got the job through a “codes consultant” she’s been working with for 30 years. “Look, it’s a little unusual — most of my clients don’t get themselves into hot water first, but it’s a job,” she said. “We don’t want the community to be unhappy, we want to solve the problem and get something good.” Regarding the DNAinfo article, which referred to comments allegedly made at last Thursday’s C.B. 2 meeting, Brandt was perplexed and said she has no idea where the information came from. “I was at the meeting myself,” she said. “[Bergman] did not say that and I didn’t either.”
Garden grab: Speaking of DNAinfo, the news site reported that the Department of Housing Preservation and Development has applied for a $6 million grant from the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation to build 75 or more affordable apartments on the site of the Elizabeth St. Garden in Nolita (or Little Italy, as old-timers still prefer to say). According to an H.P.D. spokesperson, the city plans to move ahead with the project this fall. Back in May, as first reported by The Villager, C.B. 2’s Bergman proposed to Councilmember Margaret Chin that a better site for the housing would be the large vacant lot at Clarkson and Hudson Sts. in Hudson Square, where a water-shaft project was built over the past years. Last week, C.B. 2 passed a resolution opposing the grant application for the Elizabeth St. Garden. The board is on record supporting preserving the garden as a permanent public green space. The L.M.D.C. hearing on the issue will be on Thurs., Sept. 17. Bergman noted that the L.M.D.C.’s first mandatory guideline for allocating grants states that there must be a “high level of community interest and support” for a given project. “H.P.D. still has not told us about the application or shown it to us, so how can there be a high level of interest and support,” Bergman said. “It’s like they are claiming support for a secret project.” He said he believes Councilmember Corey Johnson is supportive of using the water-shaft site — which is in his district — for affordable housing, but isn’t taking a position on the Elizabeth St. Garden. Huh? Why not? C’mon, Corey, get involved here and help save a beloved garden!
Community power: Responding to last week’s Scoopy’s item in which Assemblymember Deborah Glick rattled off the names of many of the elected officials backing District Leaders John Scott and Jean Grillo for re-election, Sean Sweeney, a leading member of Downtown Independent Democrats, scoffed that while their opponents don’t have the pols, they do have community groups supporting them. Backing Terri Cude and Dennis Gault are the Soho Alliance, of which Sweeney is the director; the South Village Neighbors; and the Noho Neighborhood Alliance; plus Mark Crispin Miller and Bo Riccobono of N.Y.U. FASP; and Sara Jones, the head of LaGuardia Corner Gardens, to name a few.
Corrections: Previously, The Villager has incorrectly stated that District Leaders Scott and Grillo both live in Battery Park City. In fact, both of them live a bit north of there, Scott in Independence Plaza and Grillo in a loft building nearby. Gault, who is running against them with Cude, does live in B.P.C. In addition, an article in last week’s issue about the planned redevelopment of a block of Gansevoort St. misrepresented a claim by the developer that the office of Councilmember Johnson, as well as the City Planning Commission, were on board with lifting the site’s restrictive zoning declaration. Rather, the developer said both Johnson and City Planning were both open to the proposal but only if the community and C.B. 2 were on board. “The developer must work with the community to arrive at a proposal that respects the context and character of the Gansevoort Market Historic District,” Johnson said in a statement this week. “I will support no proposal that does not respect the Meatpacking District, a neighborhood we love.”
