As NYU continues to expand, it has been forced to deal with the constraints of the East Village. There is simply not enough real estate available right around Washington Square for NYU to meet its space needs.

This has led to more and more expansion beyond the Square, raising the hackles of many Village residents and preservationists. As the University expects to add six million square feet by 2031, there are concerns that the University will dominate the entire area Night at the museum 2 battle of the smithsonian download.

According to city records, in CY 2008, NYU spends a cool $66,600 on city lobbying, largely in the area of land use and zoning. 95% of that money goes to two outside firms, focusing their attention on the mayor’s office, city council, the community board, etc.

All that money hasn’t really smoothed over the rocky community relations. But Alicia Hurley, the leader of the Office of Government and Community Affairs, thinks the University has been doing better and is friendlier with the community than ever before.

She told me last week:

What we have spent a lot of time doing…is to try to get the community in a better state with NYU. That’s why there’s all this campus planning, the 2031 plans…I don’t think the community, most people when you start to sit down and talk with them, they don’t just say, “go away NYU, no more buildings.” It’s more, “How can we do this in a better, transparent way?”

That’s been the problem in the past. [The community] never understood [what we were doing] and we never gave context for: why, when, how much, etc. And that’s what we’re trying to do. For most people, it’s just: tell us what you’re doing.

But there has been no shortage of issues in the past few years. The recently opened 26-story 12th street dorm caused quite a stir when the project was announced, mostly due to its incongruous height and NYU’s decision to demolish St. Anne’s Church (formerly on the site – they saved the facade).

Hurley sounded truly displeased about the way NYU handled the situation.

She said (my emphasis):

What happened there is that we were told that leases that we were in were going to be expiring…That put us out in the market…with a very aggressive agenda of bringing on as many beds as possible. And, so, a decision was made to purchase [the 12 street dorm site]. I understand why we chose to do it. But, certainly, that was the predicate for coming up with this whole different structure of how we do our building [projects]…That was certainly the model of what not to do.

More recently, in its supposedly new, transparent era, the University caught some flack after promising to maintain the four original walls of the Provincetown Playhouse theatre as it put up a new building around it. Without prior warning, part of one of the walls was removed during construction.

Hurley said the bricks had to be removed and the community wasn’t alerted before due to miscommunication between her office and the construction team.

Ah, the classic “miscommunication” line. You can never go wrong with that one. You can “take responsibility” without actually taking any.

Although the removal of bricks isn’t really that big a deal, especially considering NYU listened (pdf) to a lot of community suggestions, it was a PR nightmare.

Andrew Berman, Executive Director of the Greenwich Village Society of Historical Preservation, told me:

In classic fashion for the [NYU] administration, they made a promise about preserving a part of the building that they – in a best case scenario – had no idea whether or not they would be able to keep and therefore had no business making…

Or – in a worst case scenario – always knew it would be difficult, if not impossible, to keep but made the promise in order to try to quell some of the opposition to their project.

Hurley’s response was, unfortunately, mostly arguing that NYU would have done worse things in the past (e.g. build a taller building, not keep a working theater). Not much of a counterargument.

But she does see a huge difference in relations. “I do think that my office…has started to turn a corner with our interactions with the community,” she noted. “If you look at where we were even three years ago, it’s night and day.”

Berman isn’t so sure. He says (my emphasis), “I think that there is a lot more communication going on. However, I think the substance of what they’re doing has really not changed much. So in some ways it’s a rearranging of the deck chairs on the Titanic.”

NYU will have plenty of chances to prove him wrong as the school expands its square footage by 40% over the next 20 years. Let’s hope they keep their promises.

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This is the third post in a series on NYU budgetary issues and accountability. Photo courtesy of Flickr user Seth W. (CC).