N.Y.U.'s Alicia Hurley takes on intransigent neighbors, explains how they will sell faculty on the big 2031 expansion plan
Alicia Hurley. Sarah Laskow
1:43 pm Apr. 3, 20127
New York University was supposed to be in the home stretch in its effort to get approval for its plan to expand its footprint in Greenwich Village by some two million square feet.
But it's been a rough month for the university, whose plan, called N.Y.U. 2031, is increasingly looking like it will reach the final decision-makers this summer bruised and bloodied by neighborhood residents, the borough president and 2013 mayoral contender Scott Stringer, and two new insurgent protests against the plan being organized by prominent local businesses, and a group of the university's own faculty, respectively.
It's largely the job of Alicia Hurley, the school's public point person, to make people understand the plan, but that's not the same thing as getting people to like it.
In a Sept. 2010 interview with Capital, Hurley described the way the university dealt with neighborhood residents as one of transparency, but not approval-seeking.
"We're at a point now," said Hurley in another interview with Capital last week, "where we have kind of dwindled down the people we're dealing with to the people who live right on or around the blocks, the adamant opposition."
These aren't people simply hungry to know more about what the school has in mind.
"They're picking out the pieces that they think will be the best ammunition, so it's a real challenge," said Hurley.
When Hurley first spoke with Capital, and for some years previously, the objectors to N.Y.U. plans tended to be a recurring cast of neighborhood activists and preservationists. But since these new protests have started up, the university has been largely silent.
In February, a group of faculty began raising objections to the plans. It's a provocative dynamic—in practice, perception, or both, a university depends upon its faculty. N.Y.U. cannot be eager to have its faculty rise up against expansion in a high-profile way.
"We understand that this will have an effect on our own community—the faculty who live on these blocks," Hurley said.
The situation is muddied, what with the school acting as both landlord and employer to many faculty, but one angle is to appeal to those academics' own professional survival instinct.
Some faculty have questioned the need for N.Y.U. to expand at all. One professor at the Stern School of Business recently told Capital that, yes, N.Y.U. classrooms are packed from first thing in the morning until late in the evening.
"But that's just a fact of being in Manhattan," the professor said. "That's what students have to accept when they come here, that there might be class at 6 p.m. I don't think that's a big deal."
It's not an argument that Hurley has much time for.
"I'm not sure what departments they're in," she said of the faculty doubters in general, "but I can assure you that there are schools and departments who have immediate and aggressive growth needs that they are articulating to the University. We've got 14 different schools feeding up their space plans" to the administration.
WHEN JOHN SEXTON WAS NAMED PRESIDENT of N.Y.U. in 2002, a faculty survey was conducted about what was holding the school back academically, Hurley said, and lack of space was the top issue raised by faculty.
The second angle is as landlord: To pledge to do what the school can to make it the planned construction as painless as possible.
They're exploring, for example, sound-attenuating windows in faculty housing.
"There are ways that we can mitigate this," Hurley said, "and that's a conversation we're certainly having with some of our faculty."
She puts a slight emphasis on the word some.
"There's definitely a portion out there who would, you know, choose to still fight it altogether," she said.
Some faculty and graduate students have pointed to the project's open-ended price tag which, really, is two issues packed into one. The first is that the school has declined to specify how much it believes the expansion projects will cost as a whole, and the second is that absent a number from N.Y.U., the one that is floating around is a pretty staggering $6 billion.
It's not accurate, said Hurley.
"They must have just done a straight thousand-dollar-a-square-foot [calculation] and put it out," she said.
"We don't have a cost," said Hurley. But the one being bandied about "is not a number we would use or agree with."
She also rejects the notion that the school will be taking on an unwise amount of debt.
The four superblock buildings, said Hurley, will be paid for the way the school does anything else.
"We do financing, borrowing, philanthropy, and then just working capital," she said. Borrowing is planned through the DASNY, or the Dormitory Authority for the State of New York. The buildings would be paid for progressively; the plan, argued Hurley, is to only bring the new buildings online as they are needed and as their uses can be nailed down.
Hurley said that architecturally ambitious buildings present a new chance for would-be donors to put their names on a piece of N.Y.U.
"There actually have not been a lot of opportunities for that in our past," she said.
There are also plans for a public school on site, the tab for which, Hurley said, will be picked up by the city.
It's a floating mix of funding options that, combined with the complexities of trying to build big buildings in New York City in the 2010s, "make it hard to put a price on" the build-out plan, she said, "and it's why we wouldn't do that."
"But," she said, "it's not like we're spending down endowment to do this."
N.Y.U.'s endowment stands at about $2 billion.
"People confuse that. It's not like that's our savings account."
As for the argument that the cost of the plans will necessarily trigger the addition of (tuition-paying) students, Hurley says that that's not on the cards.
Asked directly whether N.Y.U. foresees the possibility of growing the already 40,000-plus student body, Hurley simply said, "no," adding, "our assumption we're building in [to their plans] is actually a slowing down of growth. Much of this is about a decompression of the student expansion we had, particularly in the 90s."
In one 15-year period, N.Y.U.'s student body grew by about a quarter. The outlook from here forward, said Hurley, is for growth in the range of half a percent—"a rounding error."
RUNNING THROUGH THE DEBATE IS THAT NO MATTER what reassurances come from Hurley and her ilk, the mark left on the city by N.Y.U. is potentially too great to allow to proceed purely on a basis of trust. And whatever the university does, it is still private university facilities for students and professors, and not permanent residents, that they are interested in building.
"Administrations come and go," said Community Board 2 chair Brad Hoylman at a recent forum. "That's what we see at N.Y.U. But the residents stay."
Should the superblock construction ever take the full 19 years, President Sexton would be nearly 90 years old by the time it was done. But the city would remain changed.
In the end, concrete, steel, bricks, and glass matter more than words. The superblocks were, themselves, the product of a Robert Moses slum-clearance plan. He hasn't walked the earth in 30 years, but New York City is still fighting over what he left behind.
For N.Y.U.'s leaders of today, though, there are more immediate concerns: a bulging student body as a result of decisions made but those who came before them.
NYU VP Hurley says of the hundreds who have turned out to oppose what is really the NYU Real Estate scheme: ""They're picking out the pieces that they think will be the best ammunition ..."
No, the opposition understands that the Commercial C1-7 zoning that NYU is attempting to obtain would allow development that is totally wrong for Greenwich Village (C1-7 is what is used in midtown) and that if NYU is granted that zoning overreach then it would be able to build far above and beyond what is being presented in the current Sexton 2031 scheme.
This is really quite simple: The huge zoning upgrade that NYU & Sexton are seeking is way beyond what should be allowed. City Council should send them back to the drawing board, with clear instructions that they should propose something less overwhelming and at the same time give every consideration to building in the Financial District, where the university is wanted and welcomed.
Has NYU really fully considered what 20 years of construction will do to traffic in the fairly narrow one way streets around the super blocks and its impact on the already bad traffic congestion in Soho? Also, why does NYU think that the fact that NYU owns land means that residential zoning laws can be flouted - wasn't the original Zoning Resolution of 1916 prompted by the huge shadows that were cast by downtown building before residential zoning restrictions came into effect? If City officials allow the existing residential zoning restrictions to be changed for commercial ones as NYU wants, the interior of the northern super block and much of the exterior of the southern super block will be in almost constant shadow, which is a prospect attractive only to troglodytes, not to the average Village resident, whether or not they can "get their heads around the Plan".
Where to begin in responding to Ms. Hurley’s qualified half-truths and outright inaccuracies? Responding as an NYU professor, who has witnessed and taken part in this ongoing struggle on the ground, I believe it’s best to start with those comments relating to the opposition of NYU faculty. So, let’s try to make some sense of Ms. Hurley’s statements …
Hurley: There’s a “dwindled down” number of people, living in Washington Square Village and Silver Towers, that constitutes “the adamant opposition.”
Reality: Those of us faculty who live in the two Super Blocks – that is to say, 40% of NYU's faculty! – are indeed "adamant" in our rejection Pres. Sexton’s Plan not only because of its fiscal recklessness, but also because it will destroy our and our families’ health and quality of life, not to even mention our work conditions. And it’s most certainly not simply a small group of rebellious faculty who are opposed; nearly ALL faculty, save those who have been cajoled by the administration with blandishments, violently oppose this plan, on grounds that it will bankrupt our university not only financially but intellectually. After all, what will the living conditions be like in WSV and Silver Towers – and how might these conditions have an impact on faculty retention? See next point …
Hurley: The administration (now) concedes that we, the faculty, do in fact have reason to be worried, as the project "will have some effect" on the faculty and the other local residents.
Reality: What are these “effect(s)”? How about 19-years’-worth of noise, toxic air, pollution and illness, sealed windows and air conditioners, loss of light, perpetual shadows, heavy construction equipment, rat infestation, snarled traffic and human congestion? Hell, forget about faculty retention … good luck to the administration in convincing new faculty (recruited to replace those top faculty who have now fled) to come and settle down with their kids in a two-decade-long construction zone that, upon completion, will resemble Midtown, having lost any semblance of the green neighborhood that it is now.
Hurley: But only those who don't oppose the Plan – "some faculty" – have the ear of the NYU administration, which will provide them with double-glazed windows (which, in actuality, hardly help at all, according to those faculty who already have them installed in either complex) … and maybe gas masks for the kids and pets. As for the rest of the faculty (i.e., the vast majority of us, numbering in the hundreds), who continue to speak out against the Plan? Well, we just have to (a) grin & bear it; (b) find some other place to live, or (b) – the likeliest scenario to occur – leave NYU for another academic institution that takes their faculty’s living conditions to heart.
So, in a nut shell, if one attempts to grasp the administration’s strategy of engagement with the faculty on Ms. Hurley’s most recent comments, THIS is the “conversation” they’re having with the faculty on the 2.5 million-sq-foot, $4-6 billion expansion plan. But not the entire faculty, mind you. Just “some” of the faculty. What Ms. Hurley really means – in translation – is that this is the conversation she’s had with the Deans and Directors of the various Schools, who, in turn, have been given marching orders to browbeat the individual Dept. Chairs in convincing the faculty to keep quiet.
And finally, what about the administration’s plans with regard to funding this outsized project, one largely necessitated by the increasing admissions numbers of the last several years and, by extension, the administration’s seemingly insatiable hunger for tuition dollars (not just here but abroad) from what is already the nation’s most indebted private university student body? To put it kindly, the explanation on the fiscal front is anything but satisfactory, much less promising.
“We don’t have a cost,” says Ms. Hurley. The plan, she continues, is “to only bring the new buildings online as they are needed and as their uses can be nailed down.” So, the actual function – the very purpose – of the four enormous structures, all of which would tower over the immediate preexisting residential buildings, remains undefined. What is there left to say?
Of course, Ms. Hurley is not an educator. So, she may be forgiven for not understanding or appreciating the following concluding points (although she is, after all, a critical administrative part of a major university). As the faculty and our students do know very well from experience, however, it is not a glut of real estate and taller, bigger dorms flying our purple flag that make for a great university. It is not the number of flat-screen monitors, flashing images of exotic study-abroad locations, in every window. A university is not the sum of its architectural footprints or cash-making global satellites. Instead, the defining qualities of a top educational institution –which, over the last decades, NYU has worked so long and hard to become – are the retention and hiring of superb faculty; a fair but rigorously demanding admissions policy (NYU currently admits a third or more of all applicants, as compared to, say, Columbia's 10%); better faculty-to-student ratios; smaller classes (with more seminars, colloquia and tutorials); and more generous student financial aid packages. The NYU 2031 Plan, in contradistinction, is destined to do the very opposite: hike tuition even higher than its already-worrying rates (over $40,000 and climbing), squeeze even more (heavily indebted) undergrads into our already-oversubscribed classes and – thanks to the 19-year-long construction zone that will be Washington Square Village and Silver Towers – drive away many of our best colleagues in droves, all the while making the recruitment of new faculty as exceptionally difficult as possible. If only we had a leadership that was devoted to making us as exceptional an educational institution as it has every potential to be. And if only it was devoted to doing so for the right reasons.
Adding to the other comments, it should be pointed out tht the zoning change NYU is asking for is not just for the two so called super blocks, but includes the area from 8th street to Houston and the eastern boundary of washinton square book to broadway. Why would NYU need the east side of Washington square park rezoned to midtown commercial zoning other than to put retail into the buildings directly across from the park, and to have the as right option of knocking every building down from 8th street to Houston to build high density commercial high rises. If they need more housing for students, for visiting faculty why do they hoard apartments in the buildings they now own. The over 60 empty apartments in Washington share village could easily be configured for their so called hotel space. NYU is nothing more than disingenuous and for lack of a better word disgusting in how they are spinning this ridiculous build. John sexton and his henchman including Hurley should be ashamed of what they are doing to this wonderful community and the city at large. This is strictly a real estate scheme and nothing more.
Alicia Hurley claims that the $6 billion figure was made up by opponents of the plan as a scare tactic. No, it comes off NYU's own web site:
http://www.nyu.edu/nyu2031/nyuinnyc/
"NYU is one of the largest employers in New York City, with over 16,000 employees. The NYU Core plan will create an estimated 18,200 new construction jobs, as well as 2,600 long-term employment opportunities, and will generate an estimated $6 billion in construction spending."
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Apparently the theory is that the construction industry will _gain_ $6 billion, but it's absurd to suppose that NYU will _spend_ anything like that
Ernest Davis, Professor of Computer Science, NYU
Of major importance to both the NYU faculty residents and the community at large is that NYU wants to usurp acres of PUBLIC LAND (land used by the community as park space) and incorporate it into their construction projects. The community would lose hundreds of mature trees, not to mention essential light and air. Many of these public amenities would be lost for several years or forever. The light and air and mature trees, once gone, would never be seen again.
NYU's claim that they want to build on their own land is disingenuous -- their dreams can come true only if they build on top of and underneath adjacent PUBLIC LAND too, and if they use other PUBLIC LAND as staging areas for their construction.
The NYU 2031 plan should be totally rejected, not negotiated. It's wrong for the Greenwich Village community, wrong for NYC, and even wrong for NYU.
The Financial District is BEGGING to be able to participate in NYU's expansion plans. There, NYU's buildings would be contextual and contribute to the growth and financial well-being of that district, and to all of NYC. The jobs are still there, and NYC and NYS would still benefit from the revenues. How can NYU build in Abu Dhabi and Shanghai, and then say the the Financial District is too far away? The Financial District is just a couple subway stops away from NYU's Brooklyn campus and from NYU's Village campus.
In recent days, a number of "editorials" (no byline) have appeared around the NYC media -- all in favor of NYU's Village expansion. They all read like NYU press releases.
Starting with Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, I hope our public officials are wise enough and strong enough to understand that this proposed NYU 2031 plan is a disaster for everybody, and just flatly say NO. Community Board 2 rejected the plan in its entirety, and wrote an incredible resolution (based upon the testimony of hundreds of residents) explaining why this plan should not fly.
Let's just hope that our public officials are not unduly influenced by this last-minute NYU media grandstand.
Great photo Alicia.......there is no painless construction .... unless you do not live within 10 blocks of the proposed construction....there is no way to re-grow trees and people that will be damaged by this
proposed expansion