Open Space Oversight Organization

NYU has filed for 501c3 status for the organization that will direct the future of the open spaces in the two superblocks bounded by West Third, Mercer, Houston, and La Guardia Place: the Open Space Oversight Organization or OSOO. The nominating members of the OSOO have appointed the following representatives:

• Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer has nominated Lin Zeng, Deputy Director of Land Use, Planning & Development, to serve as his office’s representative.
  
• Council Member Margaret Chin has nominated Matthew Viggiano, Director of Land Use & Planning, to serve as her office’s representative.
  
• Community Board 2 and Chair David Gruber have nominated Terri Cude, CB2 Arts & Institutions Committee Chair, to serve as the Board’s representative.
  
• New York City’s Department of Parks and Recreation has nominated William Castro, Manhattan Borough Commissioner, to serve as the department’s representative.
  
• NYU has nominated Arthur Tannenbaum, faculty and senate member, to serve as the University’s representative. 

The official announcement can be read at http://caan2031.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/OSOOappointments.pdf or at http://www.nyu.edu/content/dam/nyu/govCommunAffairs/documents/superblocks/2013-01-10-OSOO-Appointments-Memo-Web.pdf.

(HT: CAAN 2031)

NYU 2031 Means Less Open Space

According to an analysis conducted by Tom Angotti, Ph.D. and Evan Mason of the Hunter College Center for Community Planning & Development, implementing the NYU 2031 development plan would decrease the amount of open space in the neighborhood. Getting to NYU's Core: Greenwich Village Proposal Means Less Open Space is available online at http://www.hunter.cuny.edu/ccpd/repository/files/nyuopenspacefinal-formatted.pdf. You can also find a link to the document on our Resources Page.

Sasaki Signs and Accessible Atriums

From Andrew Berman's op-ed in The Village Voice titled Top 10 outrageous things about N.Y.U. plan approval:

Sasaki signs and accessible atriums: The “amenities” offered to the public in exchange for the lavish approvals given to N.Y.U. would be funny if they weren’t so sad. Two stand out. First, N.Y.U. will have to install better signs announcing that Washington Square Village’s award-winning Sasaki Garden is open to the public — that is, before it demolishes the garden to make way for massive new buildings and an underground labyrinth of labs and classroom. Second, in exchange for the loss of public parks, playgrounds, gardens and dog runs, N.Y.U. will have to allow public access to an atrium inside the massive, million-square-foot Zipper Building.

(Andrew Berman is the executive director of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation.)

Green Infrastructure Capacity of Superblocks

Writing about the Lower East Side towers-in-the-park owned by the NYC Housing Authority, urban historian/planner/and designer Kerri Culhane observes:

Superblocks provide the advantage of open space for the deployment of green infrastructure.

The Sasaki Garden is existing and functioning green infrastructure! The City should acknowledge the garden in the Green Infrastructure Plan released by DEP in 2010 instead of allowing NYU to demolish the Garden to accommodate 1,180,000 square feet* of new construction.

Read Ms. Culhane's essay for Urban Omnibus at http://urbanomnibus.net/2012/08/making-connections-planning-for-green-infrastructure-in-two-bridges/.

* This figure is the certified square footage of the North Block of the NYU 2031 plan.  City Council on July 25, 2012 reduced the gross square footage on the North Block to 585,000 square feet.  See here for details.

NYU 2031 = A Net Loss of 2.52 Acres

Sasaki Garden at Washington Square Village (Source: GVSHP)

Read the GVSHP blog post about the reductions in open space if NYU 2031 is approved by City Council.

Although the footprint of the proposed construction on the north superblock has been reduced slightly since, the study identified the loss in open space resulting from NYU’s original proposal — from 6.23 acres currently to 3.71 acres, a net loss of 2.52 acres, in what is the community district with the second lowest ratio of open space per resident in the city.

Open Space: Actual vs. According to NYU 2031

In the Draft Environmental Impact Statement, NYU states that there are .58 acres of open space on both of the superblocks. To arrive at this number, NYU is counting only the Mercer Street Playground in the Washington Square Village superblock and the Coles Plaza and Playground at the Silver Towers block as open space. This completely ignores the variety of passive and active use open space throughout the blocks, which totals nearly 8 acres. (Source: "The TRUTH About Open Space and The NYU 2031 Plan", GVSHP).