Columbia Expansion Gets Go-Ahead from State

From the NY Times:
Columbia University cleared a major hurdle on Thursday in its effort to expand its campus into Manhattanville when state officials voted to approve the project, opening the door for the use of eminent domain to allow the university to acquire land from holdout owners.

Columbia already owns most of the 17-acre expansion zone in the largely industrial neighborhood in western Harlem, where the university’s $6.28 billion expansion plan would build a new campus over the next 25 years.

The vote, by the board of directors of the Empire State Development Corporation at its offices in Midtown, came after two hours of impassioned testimony against the plan by more than two dozen people, including residents, local business owners and their lawyers.

Norman Siegel, the prominent civil rights lawyer who represents Nicholas Sprayregen, one of the last holdout landowners, immediately declared they would file a lawsuit challenging the ruling.

“We’re not against development; we’re not against Columbia University,” he said. “We just don’t think it’s legal, constitutionally, to employ eminent domain.”

A Columbia spokeswoman, Victoria Benitez, would say only, “We’re pleased that the Empire State Development Corporation has approved the general project plan.”

Columbia’s expansion plan has sparked opposition from residents and business owners in the development zone, as well as from community leaders in Harlem and some Columbia students. For the past several years, the university, whose endowment was reported in June at $7.1 billion, has bought land from dozens of property owners. The area in dispute is bounded roughly by Broadway on the east, Riverside Drive on the west, West 129th Street on the south and West 133rd Street on the north.

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