PHOTO BY MILO HESS
At Sunday’s Veterans Day Parade, two re-enactors dressed as a Navy
offi cer and a nurse did the famous kiss — well, almost — immortalized
in a photo by Alfred Eisenstaedt on V-J Day in Times Square on Aug. 14,
1945. They even got the way the man held his wrist right. The parade
started at 23rd St. and Fifth Ave. and made its way Uptown. This year
marked the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I, and there were
ranks of marchers dressed in period Doughboy uniforms.
jacent beloved LaGuardia Corner Gardens
and due to the below-grade facility
N.Y.U. plans to build beneath the school
site — making it virtually impossible for
S.C.A. to determine when it can actually
begin construction.
Now, with 2018 drawing to a close,
C.B.2 is again demanding the date for the
S.C.A.’s decision and for funding allocation
be pushed back to the original 2025
date, providing a wider window between
the decision and construction’s commencement,
to allow for all the needed
work prior to “shovels in the ground.”
N.Y.U. instead recently agreed, per a
memo to its own affi liates (without offi
cial notifi cation to C.B. 2, as of this
writing) to push the required date for the
S.C.A.’s decision back a bit — this time
to 2021, as a fi nal extension despite C.B.
2’s well-reasoned justifi cations for the
original 2025 date. And still no word on
the core and shell promised by N.Y.U.
Well, some of us never forgot that commitment.
C.B. 2 and its strong Schools
and Education Committee, along with
local politicians, including those present
for the core-and-shell announcement,
must keep on pushing N.Y.U. to honor its
statement from that day in March 2010.
If the core and shell are built or an
equivalent amount of funding provided,
it’s almost certain the community gets
a needed school rather than N.Y.U.’s
132,000 square feet for a community facility
— that can vanish forever if a downturn
in nonprofi t funding lasts more than
a year, which, sadly, is all too likely.
N.Y.U., we call upon you to provide
the core and shell of a public school on
your land as you promised. The community
deserves no less.
Cude is chairperson, Community
Board 2
Talking Point
Core and shell of a pledge
on Bleecker Street school
BY TERRI CUDE
In March 2010, as New York University
was preparing to seek approvals
for its overwhelming 2031 Plan, the
university made a big announcement.
At a podium in the conference room
of then-Manhattan Borough President
Scott Stringer, N.Y.U. Senior Vice President
Lynne P. Brown stood with Stringer,
some Community Board 2 members,
including then-Chairperson Brad Hoylman,
me (as co-chairperson of the Community
Action Alliance on NYU2031)
and top N.Y.U. offi cials. Brown proudly
announced that N.Y.U. would build the
core and shell of a public school on the
superblocks of Greenwich Village.
Newspapers, including The New York
Times, covered this, stating: “Lynne P.
Brown, a senior vice president at N.Y.U.,
said that the university would donate
100,000 square feet of ‘gutted space’
within one of the facilities that N.Y.U.
would build. That room could accommodate
about 600 students.”
Borough President Stringer took the
podium to declare that, this time, N.Y.U.
would not be using a school as bait for
approval of its 2031 Plan. The school
was offi cially going to happen, he said,
and was therefore “off the table,” with
no further agreements needed. In other
words, it wasn’t going to be another empty
promise, like N.Y.U. has been offering
for decades. (There’s even a February
1960 letter to The New York Times from
N.Y.U.’s president promising a school for
the benefi t of the community, as well as
N.Y.U.’s own faculty and affi liates.)
Getting the core and shell means that
the city would save more than half of the
usual costs of building a school, plus not
have to purchase the land, virtually assuring
the community would get a public
school. And because this all was to happen
well in advance of the city’s Uniform
Land Use Review Procedure, it would not
need to be part of ULURP negotiations
and approvals: This was a done deal.
During 2011 and 2012 as the approvals
process proceeded, somehow the commitment
to a core and shell of a school
morphed into simply the land. And this
came with new strings: The land for
a school would only be provided if the
city’s School Construction Authority formally
expressed a commitment to build a
school and fund it by 2025. Where was
the promise to provide the core and shell
that would mitigate an enormous amount
of taxpayer cost to create a school? It was
conveniently forgotten.
The ULURP process happened in
2011 and 2012. Through three of the
four stages of ULURP — the community
board (which voted a resounding “No”
on the NYU2031 Plan); the borough
president (who voted “Yes” on the plan,
though with conditions); and City Planning
(which, voted “Yes,” with some minor
tweaks) — the 2025 date remained.
Then came the City Council. The
2025 date was suddenly moved up to
2014, even though the S.C.A. works on
fi ve-year budget cycles and the required
funding was not in that cycle’s budget.
To mitigate the almost certain loss of
a school, in N.Y.U.’s 100,000-squarefoot
building (which would also include
32,000 square feet of underground
space), 25,000 square feet would be
provided to “community facilities” that
could pay a reduced rent. But even that
came with a clawback: If the space goes
unrented after one year — whether from
initial attempt to rent or a year after the
tenant vacates — N.Y.U. is free to occupy
that space, with no further responsibility
to fi nd a community-benefi t tenant.
In 2014, as the pushed-up deadline
loomed, strong pressure by C.B. 2 and
local school advocates got N.Y.U. and
Councilmember Margaret Chin to reopen
the issue and move the S.C.A.’s
deadline to the end of 2018. However, we
fought to restore the 2025 deadline since
the 2018 date came with a shorter window
from deciding to build a school to
commencing actual construction. That
window is a strong concern since the
site, at Bleecker St. and LaGuardia Place,
where the Morton Williams supermarket
stands, is a diffi cult one due to the ad-
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