Yesterday’s protest against NYU’s proposed 40-story pinwheel tower brought an incensed crowd of roughly 60 to the courtyard between the I.M. Pei-designed building cluster on Bleecker and Mercer Streets. If built, the tower would be the tallest structure in Greenwich Village, and would house a university-run hotel and faculty housing.
Residents of the existing three buildings and of the surrounding neighborhood gathered in a corner of the courtyard, chanting anti-expansion slogans and bearing signs that read witty comments like “NYUZILLA: KING OF THE MONSTERS,” and “Stop NYU’s Tower of Babel.”
Andrew Berman, the head of the Village preservation society GVSHP, reminded the crowd that NYU not only needs landmark approval to build the structure, but must also be permitted to lift a deed restriction preventing development in the courtyard, something that was a condition of NYU receiving the land in the first place. “NYU is counting on us to have short memories. But this community does not forget,” shouted Berman. The area itself, he said, is zoned for residential space only, adding to the laundry list of municipal alterations needed to actually arrive at anything close to what NYU envisions for the open space. Gallery after the jump.
The Financial District, he said, was where NYU should put the tower, and any other buildings involved in the 2031 expansion plan. “That is contextual there, that is exactly the type of development that is needed down there, and is not needed here,” Berman said.
Zach Schwartz-Weinstein, a graduate student and TA for a MAP course, was the most overtly impassioned speaker at the makeshift podium, probably because protests are kind of his thing. He’s involved with GSOC-UAW, the union for graduate employees at NYU, who’ve been known to rally for recognition in front of Bobst from time to time. “We know what its like to be ignored and exploited by this university,” he said. ”NYU’s motto is ‘A private university in the public service.’ Who’s service is a hotel in? To make NYU more money at our expense. It’s long past time for NYU administrators to start treating New Yorkers with dignity and respect.”
According to Schwartz-Weinstein, 37 of the 40 floors of the tower will be taken up by the hotel, rendering its contribution to faculty housing quite small.*
Brett Gary, a Media, Culture and Communications professor, has lived in the building complex for 15 years. He acknowledged that NYU is indeed in need of more faculty housing, but was at the protest because “it should not here, in the middle of a collapsing real estate market.” What’s more, he says the new tower within the confined space would so diminish the quality of life of the faculty living there, perhaps to the point of losing its attractiveness to prospective professors.
“Every kid that lives in these buildings learns to ride their bike here. It’s a real treasure. [The tower] will bring thousands of people into this small space,” Gary said.
The dog run, the playground and the community garden within the complex are three of the strips of open space NYU would need to eliminate to build the tower. [Ed. note: Another NYU 2031 project -- the Zipper loft planned for the Coles site -- would require the elimination of the dog run, but the pinwheel tower plan "specifically retains the community garden and creates a new playground on the Morton Williams site," writes NYU Spokesman John Beckman. The dog run would also be rebuilt elsewhere within the superblock.] Residents we spoke to were uniformly furious at this possibility. Many brought their children, who carried hand-drawn signs of varying degrees of heartwrenching, complete with adorably misspelled pleadings for their playground.”The plase will be crowdid weth pepol,” read one young boy’s posterboard.
Tonight’s landmark committee meeting will could help determine the fate of the proposed tower, when NYU presents their landmark application for a committee vote. Their vote, however, is only advisory, not binding.
* UPDATE: NYU Spokesman John Beckman writes that Schwartz-Weinstein is incorrect. “If the tower were to contain a hotel, it would be about [a] 50/50″ split between housing and hotel floors. He added that the tower would only have 38 stories.
Thank you for the correction. I apologize for the error. However, I believe that the larger point is still valid – NYU administrators want to tear down a playground and build a hotel in its place, and they have threatened to tear down the closest supermarket to many elderly residents of the area if they are not permitted to do so. I think the strongest argument against the way NYU administrators have conducted themselves in this manner is that they are prioritizing abstract models of endowment growth or far-flung dreams of terraforming the area over the lives and needs of those of us who make NYU and it’s neighborhood what it is, the very people central to the brand that NYU is now attempting to market, with apparent success, to a globalized higher-Ed consumer-public. Two years ago, NYU debuted the 2031 plan with grand promises of a new era of cooperation between the university and the community. This era seems to have ended swiftly.
@zach — sorry, I have to offer some corrections. This will be a little long; forgive me.
There is NO playground where NYU has proposed to build the fourth tower, which at this point we think would be 1/2 faculty housing and 1/2 a moderately-priced, NYU-affiliated hotel (for people traveling here to int’l conferences, visiting faculty, parents coming for visits, etc etc, but also open to non-NYU people). We have proposed to build the tower basically where the Bleecker St driveway is, not on a playground. What we HAVE said is that if we receive approval to build the tower on the proposed site, we would create a playground and greenspace where the supermarket is now. So, not only would this NOT tear down an existing playground, but we would add a new one to the block. It would actually increase the green/open space on the block.
And I want to be clear: this is property NYU owns and has owned for many years. It involves no eminent domain. It involves no tearing down of the existing residential buildings. It involves no requests for additional square footage — it uses only the square footage currently available under zoning (ie, no “upzoning”).
There is an alternative: to build a tower on the Morton Williams site. There were some advantages to that site: it is not part of the landmarked area, so there would be no need to go through the landmarks approval process. Also, that corner site has a bigger “footprint,” giving us more flexibility in what kind of structure to build there. It’s what we intended to do when we bought that plot of land in 2001 (we had owned the rest of blocks for several decades).
But as we looked at the block as a whole and the Pei configuration, the proposal we are now making seemed the better solution for adding square footage to the block. In the end, if we do not receive the approvals, we will build on the Morton Williams site.
I invite you to take a look at our submission to the Landmarks Preservation Commission, for a fuller explanation: http://www.nyu.edu/nyu2031/nyuinnyc/pdfs/NYUFourthTowerFilingOct2010.pdf
Lastly, we are not threatening to eliminate the supermarket. We have committed to keeping a supermarket here for the community. Whether we are able to go ahead with this proposal and transform the current supermarket site to green/open/playground space or whether we end up building on the Morton Williams site, we would relocate the supermarket to another space — probably a new building on the Coles site. Because we fully understand the importance to the neighborhood of continuing to have a supermarket.
Hope this helps
John Beckman
No, it doesn’t help.
You have *never* adequately expained why you must disrupt the Pei design or indeed why you are forced to continue to build in Greenwich Village instead of FiDi. You have not even demonstrated a clear necessity for added facilities at all.
And as for an NYU-owned hotel here: NOTEL.
I am not only in favor of the Pinwheel Tower, I support demolishing the three horrendous towers that exist next to it and restoring the grid. It’s a complete tragedy that they were landmarked.
[...] And ProtestThe complaints about the plans on this block have been loud and clear. Just yesterday, Villagers gathered in the courtyard to protest the new Pinwheel Tower plan. Holding signs like “NYUZilla” and “Invest in [...]
Dear author – what rally were you at? The one I went to had over two hundred people – I could not get within 40 feet of the speakers. Cute photo journalism btw – no crowd shots – just individual shots. By saying there were 60 people undermines the truth of how many and how much the neighborhood dislikes NYU’s future plans. When you are done doing propaganda for NYU send your resume to FOX.
@Jeff: Sixty is a rough estimate, but there simply were not 200 people there. Please finish reading the article, and this one, before you accuse us of “doing propaganda for NYU.”
Agree with Jeff Katz. The group shots–and there are a few on the web–indicate far, far more than 60 people. Two hundred would be an excellent guestimate.
[...] a 400-foot ‘pinwheel’ tower between the I.M. Pei buildings in University Village was just heating up. It quickly took center stage in the 2031 drama, until an angry letter from I.M. Pei himself [...]