Columbia University

Students and other demonstrators who gathered in the main Quad of Columbia University's Morningside Heights campus yesterday were aware of the significance of the date they chose for their class walkout, a day after the 40th anniversary of the first in a wave of protests that rocked the campus in 1968.

Around noon, a couple of hundred students, professors and assorted other protesters gathered to hear anti-war speeches from several professors and a young Iraq war veteran. All around them, hundreds more students were sunbathing and playing frisbee on this warm April afternoon.  read more »

While New York City has terrific drinking water, many of us still buy and drink bottled water. Some resourceful types carry around reusable containers and fill them with tap water, but many of us buy new bottles water at the store, often once a day or more. My colleague Eleanor Sterling, the Director of Graduate Studies for Columbia’s Department of Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Biology and the Director of the Center for Biodiversity and Conservation at the American Museum of Natural History, is the curator of a wonderful exhibit at the Museum called, “Water: H20 = Life." According to the bottled-water facts and figures presented in that exhibit:

Worldwide, 2.7 million tons of plastic are used each year to make water bottles, but in the U.S., less than 20 percent of these bottles are recycled.

The total estimated energy needed to make, transport, and dispose of one bottle of water is equivalent to filling the same bottle one-quarter full of oil.  read more »

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For all David Paterson's considerable charm and wit, his managerial style has been described by Democratic insiders as "jazz government." He is not into discipline. He's no good at firing people. His greatest political talent seems to be being in the right place at the right time.

But always walking one step behind Paterson now is his own éminence grise, Charles O'Byrne, an extremely intelligent, well-connected, tough and reclusive former Jesuit priest who as the governor's chief of staff will be one of the most powerful players in New York government. When the Spitzer governorship fell under the weight of the recent sensational sex scandal, Mr. O'Byrne became the gatekeeper of the new regime in Albany.  read more »

 Eric Gioia, a high-energy and ambitious thirty something city councilman from Queens, has decided to run a “carbon-neutral” relection campaign next year.

Gioia will eliminate paper invitations to campaign events, use only recycled paper when paper is used and cut down on mass mailers, balloons and buttons.

He also plans to purchase carbon offsets and use hybrid vehicles.

"There is a lot of waste on campaigns, and I think ... you have to recognize the impact you're having on the world around you," he told The New York Post a couple of days ago.

It's possible to have carbon-free events and products. Organizations such as Carbon Fund are now promoting Carbon-free businesses. The company's Web site describes its initiative as "an innovative and flexible program that can help your business to reduce its carbon footprint to zero through carbon offsets and reductions."

All of this has its value, helps build awareness and is a useful educational tool. But it’s a short-term band-aid when major surgery is required.  read more »

 Traditionally, there has been a trade-off perceived between protecting the environment and economic growth. But sustainability analysts reject this trade-off and argue that economic growth requires effective environmental stewardship. According to New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, “green is the new red, white and blue.”

In his article “The Power of Green,” Friedman argues that green is not about cutting back. “It’s about creating a new cornucopia of abundance … It’s about getting our best brains out of hedge funds and into innovations that will not only give us the clean-power industrial assets to preserve our American dream but also give us the technologies that billions of others need to realize their own dreams without destroying the planet.”

That’s the goal of the Green-For-All campaign, which pushed Congress to provide $125 million to train 30,000 people a year in green trades. While I have reservations about the new federal Energy Independence Act of 2007—it did manage to authorize $125 million for the creation of a Green Jobs program, a worker-training program that helps poor people qualify for jobs in energy-efficient construction or the renewable power/biofuels industry.  read more »

From our real estate editor, Tom Acitelli:

I went to vote this morning at PS 162 at 109th and Broadway in Morningside Heights; I had to do one of those affidavit ballots in front of someone, and the elderly woman in front of me said, “I’ve been doing this for 10 years, and I’ve never seen so many young people.”

I hadn’t really noticed until then—but there were a lot of young people in line.

More than four years after the concept was first presented, and four months into the city’s public approval process, the Bloomberg administration’s plan to rezone 125th Street appears to be facing mounting opposition.

Numerous advocacy groups plan to critique the proposal at a City Planning Commission hearing scheduled for Jan. 30, and Manhattan’s Community Board 10 has been holding workshops that prepare residents to deliver testimony in preparation for the meeting.  read more »

The reaction to Wednesday's City Council approval of Columbia's 17-acre expansion into West Harlem is varied and robust, as expected. (Curbed runs down a lot of it here.)

The Observer's print edition this week looked back on the university's oft-controversial efforts to win support from Harlem residents and leaders for the expansion. It was not always pretty and never easy:  read more »

Lee Bollinger, the president of Columbia University, knew from the get-go that in order to expand, he had to win over Harlem. He and his aides went to great lengths to get neighborhood leaders to see what a new campus could do for them.

Somehow, months or even years later, Harlem, or at least a vocal portion of it, is still not convinced. At a Dec. 12 City Council hearing, Mr.  read more »

In light of tomorrow’s expected City Council vote on Columbia University’s expansion plan, the Harlem group that is negotiating a community benefits agreement is trying to finalize beforehand a set of pledges for the school to make on issues such as affordable housing, education and job training.

The agreement, according to a source familiar with the negotiations, is all set except for one crucial element: the numbers were left blank.  read more »

Nick Sprayregen, one of the last property owners resisting Columbia’s expansion into West Harlem, has rarely had nice words to say about the university. But today, following a 50-minute meeting, it sounded like he had found new friends—or, more accurately, potential business partners.

“The subject of the conversation moved to my swap idea, and they were interested in discussing it, which was the whole point of them calling the meeting,” Mr.  read more »

Columbia University said today it was back-tracking on its plan to remove the Cotton Club at 656 West 125th Street and make way for a small park as part of its West Harlem expansion today after getting negative feedback. (Get it? Feedback?)  read more »

Nick Sprayregen and Columbia University, who have been staring each other down over the ownership of four properties in West Harlem, are going to talk again tomorrow, Mr. Sprayregen said.

It would be the first time in more than three years. At that time, Mr. Sprayregen made it clear he did not want to sell his properties to make way for the university’s expansion as long as Columbia was threatening eminent domain.  read more »

A reader forwarded me this email invitation from The Columbia Political Union, a faculty-student group at Columbia University:

Friendly Fire Series: Discussion with Former White House Correspondent Jeff Gannon
Wednesday, December 3rd at 7:00pm in the Harison Room, 2nd Floor, Faculty House

Gannon, you may recall, was that oddly credentialed fake White House reporter who also had a colorful side job.

Full email after the jump.  read more »

People around the country seem to be having such a blast with these community benefits agreements--pacts between private groups and developers to provide affordable housing and other benefits--but in New York, they are turning out to be such chores. The one at Atlantic Yards has been faulted as a meek deal arranged behind closed doors by Astroturf groups. So people up in Harlem promised to create a truly representative body to negotiate with Columbia University over benefits that the school would offer local residents as part of its expansion, and it's started to unravel in the final crucial weeks.

Or maybe not. Today, three members of the local development corporation are announcing they will resign from the body in protest of being shut out of the negotiations. But the lawyer representing the development corporation is suggesting that the loss of those three members may hasten completion of a community benefits agreement.

“Our mission is clear, our vision is clear. We are going to negotiate a community benefits agreement,” the lawyer, Jesse Masyr, said. “I think that you could make the argument that two out of the three members never really intended to fulfill the mission of the LDC.”

Mr. Masyr would not name which two members he was talking about.

One of the three who resigned is Nick Sprayregen, who owns four storage warehouses that would be taken over by the university to make way for its expansion. He had been fighting this summer to hold onto his seat, but is now going to voluntarily give his position up. The two other members are Tom DeMott, a tenant who lives near the expansion footprint and represents tenant associations, and Luisa Henriquez, who represents tenants in a city housing program living in the expansion footprint.  read more »

On Monday, as the City Planning Commission gave its nod to Columbia University, the school tried to give a little good news to West Harlem as well. Columbia promised to build another 160 housing units on its new campus to offset gentrification pressures its employees would bring to the surrounding neighborhood.  read more »

Columbia University’s proposed expansion plan received the City Planning Commission’s approval handily today, but it wasn’t as easy as some expected.

For one, there was the constant heckling of the commissioners before, during and after the meeting.  read more »

As the deadline for City Council action on Columbia University’s expansion comes closer, the local development corporation established to negotiate the all-important community benefits agreement has asked the school to donate an amount “well in excess of $100 million” toward creating more affordable housing in the neighborhood, according to an individual source familiar with the negotiations.

The affordable-housing fund is one of several outstanding issues, but may be the hardest to resolve before Dec. 19, when the Council breaks for the holidays. University spokeswoman La-Verna Fountain said Columbia would not comment on the negotiations.

The source said that the school, while it had not offered its own number, understood it had to contribute more, and in a more timely way, than the $20 million that Borough President Scott M. Stringer secured through an agreement in September.

“The way a friend put it, the borough president popped Columbia’s cherry.”  read more »

Columbia University pledged today to spend more than $32.5 million in West Harlem on affordable housing, a new park, landscaping for public housing complexes and the like. In return, the school’s expansion plan received the endorsement of Borough President Scott M. Stringer.

It was, if you think about it, a small investment to make, given that the new 17-acre campus, north of 125th Street and generally west of Broadway, is going to cost something like $6 billion.

President Bollinger, who shared the podium with Mr. Stringer at a press conference this afternoon in the borough president’s offices, said, however, “We want to do our part… This is not a trivial amount.”

Mr. Stringer’s endorsement is not binding; only the City Planning Commission, the City Council and the Mayor have a real say in rezoning. But it helps turn around a narrative that has been dominated by community opposition to the plan, including the local community board’s 31-2 vote against Columbia.

Some $20 million will be devoted to an affordable housing fund that will partially offset the indirect displacement that the new campus is expected to cause outside the footprint.

But given the fact that it costs, conservatively, somewhere around $400,000, and sometimes as much as $1 million, to build an affordable apartment in Manhattan, the contribution would only go so far in alleviating the indirect displacement. The draft environmental impact statement, for instance, says that “approximately 3,293” nearby residents would be forced out because of gentrification.

In addition, Columbia said it would turn a piece of its campus into a park, pay for its maintenance, and make other improvements around the area, including $11.25 million over 25 years to keep up a new waterfront part nearby.

Mr. Stringer said he would recommend against the use of eminent domain in the plan, but did not make that a condition of his support. (The university has already forsworn eminent domain to take residential property.)

Nick Sprayregen, owner of storage facilities in the footprint who could see his properties taken by eminent domain (albeit with "just compensation”), e-mailed to say, “Mr. Stringer is now in effect backing Columbia’s continued forced relocation of tenants and the threatened use of eminent domain against all who refuse to sell to Columbia with the threat of condemnation hanging over their heads.”

It doesn’t seem like the West Harlem Community Board cares much for anything: In August, they broadly rejected Columbia University’s proposal to expand. Thursday night, the Columbia Spectator reports, the board voted against a plan put forth by Nick Sprayregen, the property owner who has been fighting the university’s expansion effort, which would have rezoned his storage warehouses for residential, office and community uses.

“The longer, larger implications are unclear because there was an anticipation that the City Planning Commission was not going to vote in favor of the proposal in any case,” Richard Lipsky, Mr. Sprayregen’s lobbyist, told The Observer. He said that Mr. Sprayregen would continue to pursue the proposal.

Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver told a reporter for The New York Sun that Columbia University could be jeopardizing consideration for state money in the future with its insistence on inviting Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to speak today despite wide protest.  read more »

Columbia University is continuing to hammer away at the objections to its expansion plan as it goes under review, this week announcing that it found a spot to move 27 of the 132 households it would have to displace from buildings that it wants to take over for a new campus in West Harlem.

The school said it would construct a new 42-unit elevator building at 148th Street and Broadway—about a mile away from where the families are currently living—which would be large enough to accommodate the displaced families and then some.

The replacement housing has been virtually a precondition for getting the Bloomberg administration's backing on the expansion and the university has long pledged to find it. The tenants are participating in a city program known as Tenant Interim Lease, or TIL, in which renters in city-owned buildings can buy their buildings and turn them into co-ops. The city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development said it agreed to the switch because it would take less time for Columbia to construct a new building than it would for the city to rehabilitate the old ones, which is a precondition for the turnover.  read more »

In a measure of just how much of an impression the Rev. Calvin O. Butts' statements Thursday night on NY1 made on Columbia University's president, Lee Bollinger, a spokeswoman has e-mailed to say:

President Bollinger has a longstanding relationship with Rev. Butts and was therefore surprised to hear his comments. But he has called the Reverend to find out what his concerns are. More generally over recent years and especially in recent months, Columbia has engaged in hundreds of meetings with community groups, associations, individuals and the Local Development Corporation in West Harlem in shaping its proposal for long-term growth in the old Manhattanville manufacturing zone.

The Rev. Calvin O. Butts III, the pastor of Abyssinian Baptist Church, is starting to speak out against Columbia University’s expansion—which is exactly the opposite of what is supposed to be happening now that political consultant Bill Lynch is trying to get a coalition of local supporters together.

On NY1’s “Inside City Hall” last night, Rev. Butts said “Columbia is moving in a way that is really alientating a lot of the community members who have been really interested in working with them to develop a good plan, particularly in the area of affordable housing.”

We’re waiting to hear back from Mr. Lynch’s office and from Columbia.

Nick Sprayregen, the owner of Tuck-It-Away Self Storage, has become one of the biggest names, and deepest pockets, among opponents of Columbia University’s expansion plan for West Harlem.

So what’s he doing making a peace offering? And why is he doing it through the press?

Mr. Sprayregen is proposing that he give up three of his buildings that are right smack-dab in the center of the 17-acre area where the Ivy League school wants to create a third campus. In exchange, he wants the university to give him two pieces of land that it already owns on the eastern edge of the site.

Errol Louis mentioned the idea in passing in the Daily News last week. On Monday, Mr. Sprayregen told us a bit more:  read more »

The West Harlem community board voted firmly against Columbia University’s expansion, 31-2, Monday night, which, while purely advisory, is going to put a lot of pressure on the school to make at least some changes to its plan.

But it was not a through-and-through rejection: The resolution listed 10 conditions under which the board would have supported the plan to turn 17 acres just north of 125th Street and west of Broadway into new classroom and laboratory space.  read more »

Columbia University’s shopping spree for Manhattanville properties continues.

The university recently closed on buildings at 640 West 132nd Street and 2311 12th Avenue for $8 million, according to city records. A representative from Columbia told The Observer that both properties have been under contract for a few years, and are currently used primarily by Verizon Communications.  read more »

Columbia University’s press office kindly sent us (unsolicited) a PDF of a mailer sent out to 50,000 area residents “to help inform and educate them about Columbia's proposed Manhattanville expansion project.” Another “liar flyer” a la Atlantic Yards?

Well, like Forest City Ratner, Columbia is also using the mailer to help build a citizens’ army of supporters for the project, this time via a reply card that permits residents to volunteer “to speak in support of the project at public hearings.”

Unlike Forest City, however, which deftly avoided showing any images of skyscrapers, Columbia’s propaganda actually gives a glimpse (if only a glimpse) of what the project will look like.  read more »

Much has been made about the potential gentrifying effect Columbia University’s proposed expansion will have on Harlem. The draft environmental impact statement (PDF), which came out earlier this summer, does not disappoint. With the self-effacing accuracy for which these EIS’s are known, “approximately 3,293” residents of the surrounding area are vulnerable to “indirect displacement” due to “upward rent pressure” (p. S-31).

It is a big enough blip that the report’s authors, AKRF (which The Observer profiled this week), calls indirect displacement a “significant and adverse impact” that would be only partially mitigated by steps that the university is contemplating, such as developing affordable housing in the community board district or creating a graduate student residence on Columbia-owned land nearby.

And AKRF is being paid by Columbia--and by the Empire State Development Corporation (though that's another story).  read more »

Nick Sprayregen, a key opponent of Columbia University’s expansion plan, is still in the game.

Last night, he defeated, by two votes, an attempt by elected officials to oust him from the West Harlem Local Development Corporation, a panel negotiating a community benefits agreement with Columbia, because of an alleged conflict of interest.  read more »

A paid consultant to Columbia University has been working to form a grass-roots coalition to come out vocally in support of the school’s plan to build a campus in West Harlem.

Bill Lynch, a former deputy mayor and well-known Harlem figure, said he has been working for about eight months to get elected officials, community organizations and minority-owned businesses to go public with their support for the new campus, which is expected to employ 6,000 people once it is fully built out 25 or 30 years from now.  read more »

Judith Rodin transformed the relationship between the University of Pennsylvania and its Philadelphia neighborhood. What can she teach Lee Bollinger about Columbia and Harlem?  read more »

A fellow member of the community organization that is negotiating with Columbia University has proposed ousting Nick Sprayregen, a vehement opponent of the Manhattanville expansion, from its board.

Susan Russell, the chief of staff for City Council Member Robert Jackson of Harlem, made a motion last week to discuss removing Mr. Sprayregen from the West Harlem Local Development Corporation because she said that he has a conflict of interest.  read more »

Columbia University is officially on a buying spree for Manhattanville property.

City records shows that the university closed today on two more properties, both on 131st Street, for approximately $18.6 million total. The two addresses--615 West 131st Street and 633 West 131st Street--sit on a block that may soon be owned entirely by Columbia. Calls to the university for comment were not immediately returned.  read more »

Perhaps one more step toward Manhattanville expansion was taken in recent days when Columbia University finalized the purchase of a vacant building at 3270 Broadway. The sale closed for $10.4 million, according to city records.

The building, which sits between 131st and 132nd Streets, is a former U-Haul facility with serious structural problems, according to a Columbia spokesperson. The property has been under contract with Columbia since May 2005.  read more »

In a few years, Columbia University students might find it even more difficult to escape the temptations of Harlem’s Dinosaur Barbeque than they do now.

Two days ago, city records listed the uptown Ivy League institution as the buyer on two properties: 635 West 131st Street for $2.26 million and 4070 Broadway for $16.5 million.  read more »

Columbia University announced today that it will not seek to take over people’s homes through eminent domain, a huge step in addressing one of the most controversial aspects of its expansion into West Harlem.

“Columbia University will not ask the state to invoke eminent domain to evict tenants living in these 132 residential units,” Robert Kasdin, the university’s senior executive vice president, said in a press release. The announcement came two days after the school presented its proposal to rezone 17 acres of West Harlem to make way for classroom buildings and research labs—and also two days after the community board unanimously approved an alternative plan that, among other items, strongly argued against eminent domain.  read more »

Columbia University President Lee Bollinger has let the world know that the city has certified the university's rezoning application for its expansion into Manhattanville. What's that mean? The official public review process and comment period for the expansion is under way.  read more »

Neighbors who protested the City Planning Commission’s timetable for reviewing Columbia University’s Manhattanville application have been heard—sort of. The West Harlem community board had feared that starting the review process—called ULURP, for Uniform Land Use Review Procedure—as expected today would limit its members' participation, since the deadline for board input would come in two months, or right in the middle of summer vacations.  read more »

Columbia University’s "final scope of work" for its Manhattanville expansion just came out, which means that they are at about step two of a seven- or eight-step city approval process. This document just lays out what the project entails and what has to be studied, and comes in at 278 pages—which doesn’t bode well for the actual environmental impact study.

   read more »

Is it just us, or are people obsessed with William James these days? It seems like there’s a new book about him every other month.

Today, Columbia University awarded one of them the Bancroft Prize for excellence in American History: Robert D. Richardson's William James: In the Maelstrom of American Modernism (Houghton Mifflin).

(Hopefully this won’t rule out the chances next year for Deborah Blum’s fascinating Ghost Hunters: William James and the Search for Scientific Proof After Death – do they give the Bancroft Prize for books about séances?)

The prize jury said Mr. Richardson’s work  “is a virtual intellectual genealogy of American liberalism and, indeed, of American intellectual life in general, through and beyond the twentieth century … the story Richardson tells is engaging, his research deep, his writing graceful and appealing.”

High praise that nevertheless somehow makes it sound like a snore.

Jack Temple Kirby also won the $10,000 prize for his book Mockingbird Song: Ecological Landscapes of the South (University of North Carolina Press). This book “is an ecological history of the American South, told through a series of chapters about different types of landscapes and ….Blah blah blah blah blah.” 

Bring back the ghost hunter!

In a press conference in a faculty room at the Low Memorial Library, it was just announced that John W. Kluge has pledged $400 million to Columbia University, his alma mater (Class of '37). It will be a gift from his estate, half of which will go to the college. Mr. Kluge—who was in attendance along with unviersity Preisdent Lee Bollinger—said that the money is too be used to make the university more international.

"The reason that I'm doing this is because I believe in it," said the 92-year-old Mr. Kluge. Mr. Kluge has already donated over $100 million to the unversity to help with financial aid. This gift will continue this work, but with a focus on foreign students. "I look forward to Columbia having more global students. And what better city than the city of New York?"

Mr. Bollinger, whose expansion plans have been attacked recently, made it clear that this money is not in any way tied to his proposed Manhattanville expansion—although it could be used for that down the line.

"The gift will go towards the globalization and internationalization of the university" said Mr. Bollinger. "I'm not interested in buildings. I'm interested in minds."

Attention, Columbia University students! Get ready to stand in line.

Chipotle, the wildly popular Denver-based burrito chain, will open a 2,800-square-foot outpost at 110th Street and Broadway in late July. The fast-food restaurant will be located on the northwest corner where the short-lived Casbah Rouge, a Moroccan restaurant, once sat. (It will also be across Broadway from a new luxury condo, diagonally across Broadway from a D'Agostino's grocery, and across 110th from a 24-hour Rite Aid that sells automatic ice-crushers. Ah, gentrified Morningside Heights; you look more and more like the Upper West Side with each passing year.)

Chipotle landed in the city in August 2003 with a store at 150 East 44th Street, and the line has been out the door ever since. The Columbia location will be the 16th outlet in the city, according to Katharine Smith, Chipotle's east coast PR person

There may be an extra treat in store for the Columbia student body. According to Ms. Smith, when Chipotle opens a new restaurant, it usually hosts either a fundraiser for a local non-profit or...wait for it...A FREE BURRITO DAY!

"We try and become a part of the community as soon as possible," Ms. Smith told The Real Estate on Friday afternoon.

It's safe to say that Chipotle would be welcomed to the neighborhood with open arms if they went with the latter option.

- Mark Wellborn

Taking stock of plan to expant Columbia Univerisity's campus uptown, lobbyist Richard Lipsky is criticizing what he says is a possible conflict of interest among some key principles, including Harlem powerhouse Bill Lynch.

On his website, Lipsky writes that among other possible actions, critics of the plan "will be calling for an investigation of any conflicts of interest between elected officials on the LDC [local development corporation] and Bill Lynch, recently hired by Columbia to represent the university's interest."

I just got off the phone with Bill Lynch, who said the argument is pretty weak.

"Well I don't see how we have any conflict of interest," he said. "We've been hired by Columbia University to do outreach to the community and that's what we've done."

When asked about the elected officials in the area, Lynch said, "I know them all, but I don't have any official relationship with them."

Which, he said, leaves him a little puzzled as to what the problem is.

"I'm not a lawyer," Lynch said. "My lawyers tell me it's not a conflict of interest. It looks like they're grasping for straws. That's what it looks like to me."

-- Azi Paybarah

L.A.-based frozen yogurt purveyor Pinkberry continues its low-calorie invasion of Tasti D-Lite country.

The allegedly habit-forming icy-treat chain, AKA "crackberry," has signed a lease for a new 600-square-foot shop on Broadway near Columbia University, according to Tuesday's announcement from brokerage Robert K. Futterman & Associates.

The new Morningside Heights digs will be the fifth New York City location for the West Coast dessert dealer, which has embarked on an aggressive East Coast expansion plan.

Not that Tasti D-Lite is shivering.

As a spokesperson for "NEW YORK'S #1 FROZEN DESSERT" told The Observer back in November (and recently reiterated for the Sun): "We don't consider it any competition at all... It's frozen yogurt, and our product is a unique frozen dessert which contains no yogurt at all."

Full release after the jump.  read more »

- Chris Shott