Columbia University's Expansion Plan
In the fall of 2005 Columbia University submitted an application to the Department of City Planning to rezone 17 blocks of Manhattanville, an area of West Harlem to the north and west of Columbia's Morningside Heights campus, for what the university calls Academic Mixed-Use Development: classrooms, laboratories, housing, conference spaces and other new facilities.
Columbia's plans, as detailed most recently in its Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), conflicted in many instances with the community's own plan for Manhattanville and surrounding neighborhoods, most notably in the university's proposals for dense new development of university buildings in a self-contained campus.
Columbia planners and community board members participated in a series of meetings in 2006 to identify areas of common agreement between their disparate plans for the area. The following year, Community Board 9 adjusted its own plan, seeking to accommodate the university's stated need for more space while preserving its own commitment to preserving diverse uses in this historically industrial area.
CB9 has since issued a response to Columbia's EIS, questioning among other things the university's planned configuration of the site (which would dig a deep basement connecting the entire campus) and Columbia's contention that its proposed development would only put residents in the immediate vicinity at risk of displacement.
The City Planning Commission simultaneously reviewed the Columbia and community plans, accepting much of the community plan but excluding its recommendations for Manhattanville.
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