« Suits won't stop Atlantic Yards [But maybe slacker activists might?] | Main | Marty said “get real” on traffic/parking, but ESDC didn’t agree much »
February 20, 2007
Group looks to ‘blight’ Columbia plan
Students, tenants say West Harlem project being developed in secret
MetroNY
By Amy Zimmer
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY. A group of students unfurled a large banner on a snowy patch of the main campus with the word “blight” written in red. It was a gesture of solidarity by the Student Coalition on Expansion and Gentrification with community members who they then shared the microphone with at a press conference denouncing the university’s plans to develop 17 acres in West Harlem.
Several residents and business owners in that zone are worried the state may designate the area as blighted to seize their property, making way for the $7 billion 30-year plan. Though Columbia has agreed to negotiate a “Community Benefits Agreement” with the West Harlem Local Development Corporation — a group of public housing residents, businesses and elected officials — SCEG members such as Rowan Moore Gerety remain skeptical.
“There’s been a lot of concern about the lack of transparency,” Moore Gerety, a Columbia senior, said. “Being that this is the only legally binding agreement [for the community], we’re concerned they’re going to negotiate in private sessions without public comment.”
Snarky student "press release" after the jump.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: the Universal Institute for the Public Good condemns a Columbia University Lawn as blighted due to unsanitary, ill-maintained conditions, and chronic under-use.
Just a few moments ago, representatives of the Universal Institute for the Public Good arrived at the old South Lawn recreational zone bearing “BLIGHT” notices and cease-and-desist orders against Frisbee throwers, midday revelers, and scholarly picnickers, informing them of the Institute’s plans to take over the area in order to promote the public good, as defined, of course, in the Institute’s own mission statement.
Through the proxy exercise of the power of Eminent Domain, the Institute has begun to carry out its plans to revamp this old recreational zone, saving it from the dilapidation and disease that its primary under-users appear not to have noticed.
Indeed, despite daily excursions onto the Lawn by soccer players of all stripes and ambling toddlers chasing balloons, the Institute believes that their plan for the construction of a gazillion dollar Center for Research on the Alleviation of the Negative and the Promotion of the Positive, Broadly Construed, will revitalize this defunct area.
This latest move comes after years of gradual acquisition of the area by the Institute, which has taped off an increasingly large swath of the field and forbidden any activity on it in order to ensure that its utility is maximized.
In the future, people who had hitherto used this space for the advancement of nothing but their private athletic, spiritual, and recreational pursuits, will be able to participate in the massive efforts of research and production of the Positive that are to take place there. The Institute, does not, as of yet, have plans for alternative facilities for kickball, afternoon snacking, siestas, or T’ai Chi, but it has assured all participants in the aforementioned activities that the old recreational zone of South Lawn will remain a wonderful place for them when it houses their silver bullet Center. The new Center for Research on the Alleviation of the Negative and the Promotion of the Positive, Broadly Construed, will create new means of recreation that will eradicate existing blight and uplift those who have been consistently under-using the small portion of the old South Lawn recreational zone to which they had been confined.
The Institute welcomes any input or concerns that current under-users and contaminators may have, and recommends that they contact Nobody Jones of the Institute’s Office of Goodness between 28 and 29 o’clock every Moosday and Lunday.
Posted by lumi at February 20, 2007 6:20 AM