NYU is officially vertically challenged. As of yesterday, there is a chunk of the East Village in which no structure of Founder’s-esque proportions will ever rise again. The brand-new rezoning, effective immediately, puts a cap on all future building heights at 12 stories (less than half of Third North) within eight blocks between 3rd and 4th Avenues, from East 9th to East 14th Streets.

To compensate for newly finite floorspace, the rezoning includes an allowance for greater density in residential buildings, provided the developers commit 20% of the area of a new building to low-income housing.

Still, though, we wondered what this could mean for rent prices in the future. With demand for East Village apartments not subsiding any time soon, it seems logical (reductive, certainly, but still) that at some point rent would respond to the lack of supply.

Andrew Berman, the head of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, told us he feels this just isn’t so. “In areas where we have not gotten zoning changes and many new, big fancy high-rises have gone up, we have seen prices escalate the fastest.”

The rezoning was first proposed in 2005 by the GVSHP in direct response to the construction plans for Founder’s Hall, but never made it through City Council. Berman’s email blast today was dotted with all-caps ecstaticism — “WHICH MEANS THEY TAKE IMMEDIATE EFFECT!” – but he told us that the rezoning fell short of his hopes. ”In the case of 3rd and 4th Avenue, we wanted something much more restrictive. But this is as far as City Planning was willing to go.”

Although nothing in NYU’s 2031 expansion plans mentions developing in this patch of blocks, the neighborhood is certainly within ideal range of Washington Square Park to have been prime expansion turf, before yesterday. The decision, which also includes a similar rezoning of a section of the far West Village, may be establishing a legislative precedence for other such height limits in areas desirable to university expansion. It may even be on the minds of committee members when they vote on NYU’s 40-story pinwheel tower in November.

In a city where airspace is everything, the ability to stunt vertical aspiration may be a community’s most powerful tool. It can also sink a university ship.