The New York Times, Metro Section, article on NYU and of course I wrote them a letter

Let us see if The New York Times publishes my letter....
if not I will put it up on this blog next week. How ironic NYU reps. say verbatim what I have been heard saying at rallies, on the radio to the mayor which is archived and you can find the link under "comments" on my first blog entry for this site last year...but we don't believe NYU and of course it will be only actions that could make us believe and we are still waiting...we that are left...

Many also feel too little too late...just look around the neighborhood and include all neighbors here in NYC the empire of NYU "occupies".

+ go to link, Scroll down to Oct 19th ...pick the top option for "archived link" which gives you the stream without down loadmove the cursor to 29 minutes (almost the end!!!) Suzannah B. TroyOCTOBER 19, 2007 Live from City Hall with Mayor Mike and John Gambling

http://www.nyc.gov/portal/site/nycgov/menuitem.b270a4a1d51bb3017bce0ed101c789a0/index.jsp?doc_name=/html/om/html/2007b/events_10.html

You can hear me confront him about NYU mega dorming the East Village to death and more...including my demand for community outreach resource centers in every mega dorm...

Jan. 31 just got this email from Andrew Berman www.gvshp.org

1) For the first time, NYU agreed to a a set of "planning principles" to guide the university's future development. The principles were negotiated by a task force led by Borough President Stringer which includes GVSHP, other community groups, elected officials, and community boards. The principles include the University prioritizing identifying locations OUTSIDE of our neighborhoods for possible future growth (see gvshp.org/documents/NYUPlanningPrinciples.pdf). This is a significant change in NYU's practices GVSHP has long called for (see http://gvshp.org/NYUexpansion.htm#2Feb06)
2) NYU's public 'Open House' presented a variety of possibilities the university is contemplating for its future growth (see www.nyu.edu/nyu.plans.2031/pdf/OpenHousePresentation.jan30.pdf)
Both events were covered extensively in the press, including in:
AM NY (http://gvshp.org/documents/AMNYPlanningPrinciplesNYU.pdf)
NY 1 News (www.ny1.com/ny1/content/index.jsp?stid=8&aid=77996)
The New York Times (www.nytimes.com/2008/01/30/nyregion/30nyu.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=karen+arenson+NYU&st=nyt&oref=slogin)
Metro NY(http://ny.metro.us/metro/local/article/Village_skeptical_of_Godzilla_NYU_plan/11627.html).

GVSHP worked very hard to ensure that the planning principles emphasized the need for the university to look outside the neighborhood as much as possible when contemplating additional growth. We hope and expect that these principles will be a roadmap to further more specific and concrete agreements, and we intend to hold NYU to the letter and the spirit of this document.

However, clearly much work still needs to be done. NYU's plans still project the university adding 3 million or more square feet to our neighborhood over the next 25 years -- the equivalent of seventeen or more of their new 26-story mega-dorms on East 12th Street -- an amount we find completely unacceptable. Additionally, the University's plans reflect a great deal of thinking around the possibility of new developments in our neighborhood -- especially in and around the Washington Square Village and Silver Towers superblocks -- while plans for finding development sites outside our neighborhood remain vague and preliminary. GVSHP has long taken the position that NYU should remain within their existing footprint and envelope in our neighborhood -- rather than continuing to expand -- and that their first priority must be to find alternative sites for any new growth. While the university has taken some small concrete steps in the right direction -- such as agreeing to site a new graduate dorm in Downtown Brooklyn -- we are very concerned that the University does not appear to be moving as quickly or as resolutely on alternative locations for other new development as they are for local ones. Many members of the public who attended yesterday's Open House expressed similar reservations about the university moving ahead with ANY new development plans in our neighborhood until or unless they exhaust their options for satellite locations.

You can express your concerns directly to the university by going to their feedback page at http://www.nyu.edu/nyu.plans.2031/comments/.

GVSHP will continue to work hard through the Borough President's NYU Task Force and through our own efforts to prevent inappropriate development by the University in our neighborhood. We believe the planning principles agreed to by NYU give us increased leverage in this regard, providing a means to either steer the university away from such development, or to publicly call them on their failure to maintain written agreements they have made with GVSHP, elected officials, and a broad range of community groups.

Andrew Berman, Executive DirectorGreenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation