Dear NYU Expansion Critics: ‘Move to Sioux City!’
John Sexton, NYU’s president, has the unenviable task of adding six million square feet to the nation’s largest pri-vate university, which he calls “space-emaciated.” He’s up against Village critics and two classic Gotham prob-lems—dearth of land and high costs. But he wants you to know it’s doable.
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The Sit-Down
Location: There are a lot of New Yorkers who see NYU as a real-estate developer, as a sort of a boogeyman that builds a lot of big buildings. Is this an image you have to root out?
Mr. Sexton: We don’t see ourselves as players in real estate—the kind of people your column deals with. Our interests aren’t the same. We engage in thinking about space and real estate only to the extent that that’s driven by our academic mission. And we need space.
Columbia rightly views itself as space-starved. Columbia has 236 square feet per student. We have 96 square feet per student.
We’re not investing in real estate because we never sell. I wish our endowment could somehow benefit from the fact that we own all the real estate we do. One real-estate tycoon suggested to me, actually, that we should build our endowment on a cash basis by selling all our real estate and rebuild our campus on Governor’s Island. The delta he estimated between what we could get and what we would pay to do that would be between $5 and $6 billion. But we’re not in that business.
If Columbia is space-starved, what is NYU?
We’re space-emaciated. If they’re malnourished, we’re close to death by starvation.
What motives do you ascribe to your critics because, as you said, NYU has been in the Village for such a long time. You’re an institution here.
There are some people who would prefer not to have the NYU of today or a better NYU. Those are just not critics. Those folks have a completely different value system from most people who think about the future of this city. Or they have some sort of agenda, like personal aggrandizement.
There are people of good will who see NYU as really failing to be as good a neighbor as it could have been. Sometimes that’s because of misunderstanding on one side or the other; sometimes it’s because of inadvertence; sometimes it’s because something boneheaded was done.
Are you conducting meetings with the community about your future plans because of prior mistakes?
We would be going to the community regardless because it’s the right thing to do. If they’re going to come to appreciate us as the good force that we are, I think we owe them that. I want to emphasize to you that—let’s assume there’s no history here—going to them would not be prompted principally by a desire to appease or to keep them at bay. We want to listen to the community.…
Ultimately the decision is NYU’s within the parameter of the law, but that doesn’t mean we’re going to build every building to the maximum FAR [Floor Area Ratio]—which has been the NYU way of doing things—or that we’re going to require that all of the six million square feet be right here at Washington Square Park. Next Page >
16 Park Avenue
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I would like to point out to Mr. Sexton that we have had a supermarket on the corner of Bleecker St and La Guardia Place for over forty years. People in this neighborhood need a reasonably priced place to shop for food. If he plans to build on that site he should include space for a food market.
The buildings NYU builds are often wastes of space.
Bobst Library, arguably the ugliest building they have put up, fills the entire block, yet is essentially an empty shell, most of the internal space is taken up by an atrium. I am told that the new Law building serves very few students and had to be so large so that it could have gigantic court rooms where students could practice: most courtrooms i have seen on jury duty are very small.
This is the city, and we are living in spaces smaller then those who live in the suburbs, i suggest that NYU rein in its architects and planners and have them look at the surrounding city for context not contrast.
I would like to point out to Mr. Sexton that we have had a supermarket on the corner of Bleecker St and La Guardia Place for over forty years. People in this neighborhood need a reasonably priced place to shop for food. If he plans to build on that site he should include space for a food market.
The buildings NYU builds are often wastes of space.
Bobst Library, arguably the ugliest building they have put up, fills the entire block, yet is essentially an empty shell, most of the internal space is taken up by an atrium. I am told that the new Law building serves very few students and had to be so large so that it could have gigantic court rooms where students could practice: most courtrooms i have seen on jury duty are very small.
This is the city, and we are living in spaces smaller then those who live in the suburbs, i suggest that NYU rein in its architects and planners and have them look at the surrounding city for context not contrast.
As a 62-year resident and property owner in Greenwich Village I am ashamed of also being an NYU graduate. Why not expand to another location? Why completely ruin the tone, style and demographics of this historic part of the city? NYU does not pay real estate taxes which we must make up. NYU dumps kids with no affection for or appreciation of the Village in our midst, prompting careless treatment of property and all sorts of junk food and tawdry clothing shops to serve them.
How about opening an NYU branch in Sioux City?
I would like to remind other villagers that NYU's student population of 40,000 individuals does indeed compromise a large portion of the village's population and should be viewed as an integral part of the community. NYU as an institution has been in the village longer than any of its current living residents and is itself a major part of the village's atmosphere. It's time for a reality check people. As a dynamic and growing institution it is obviously necessary to build new buildings and update its facilities. Isn't it amazing how the village turned itself around after NYU reinvested heavily in its facilities in the 1970s? NYU is also cultivating the future of the city's highly skilled intelligent workforce, so give it the respect it deserves.
At this point in time N.Y.U. has invited the community to the table to take part in the school’s future expansion plans. Many in this community view any development plans proposed by N.Y.U. with trepidation. As many of us will remember, the last time residents of the East Village had discussions with N.Y.U. about such plans, we were saddled with a massive, out-of-scale, 700-bed dormitory, fondly referred to as the “megadorm.” It will be the East Village’s tallest building. This type of overdevelopment threatens the low-scale character and existing demographics of our community.
Now, N.Y.U. needs 6 million square feet to further develop the school, bringing in an additional 5,500 students. The Village, East Village and Lower East Side have reached the saturation point in terms of N.Y.U. expansion. Any further N.Y.U. development in the East Village and Lower East Side will destroy the special character of this district.
President Sexton, in the past, has stated that he was concerned with preserving the fabric of our community. The construction of the dormitory tower at the former St. Ann’s Church site on E. 12th St. was emblematic of N.Y.U.’s true intentions — not preservation of the district and consideration of community concerns, but expansion in its own self-interest. As the article mentions, N.Y.U. must find greener pastures for its development plans — hopefully, without the implementation of eminent domain — further afield of the Village area. N.Y.U. must understand that a university within the confines of a city has a finite amount of space in which to expand.
We only hope that President Sexton’s statement — “We are committed to the process of being respectful of the ecosystem in which we live even as we go on to become as great a university as we can” — will become the standard operating policy of N.Y.U. At one time, N.Y.U. was a respected institution. Now, it has become a major developer to the detriment of the surrounding communities. Jean Standish
Standish is a member, Coalition to Save the East Village