A Manhattanville rally drew 50 people to celebrate the recent state Supreme Court ruling against the use of eminent domain for Columbia’s campus expansion and to urge University President Lee Bollinger to accept the decision.
Students and neighborhood residents gathered at Floridita Tapas Bar & Restaurant on Broadway and 125th Street before marching down Broadway, through College Walk, and down 116th Street to Bollinger’s house on Morningside Drive, where they called on Bollinger and the Empire State Development Corporation not to appeal.
“We don’t want to face the destruction of a lovely neighborhood with businesses like Floridita,” said Tom DeMott, CC ’80 and a member of the local Coalition to Preserve Community, adding of Bollinger, “He should not appeal this great decision.”
The New York State Supreme Court, Appellate Division ruled Dec. 3 that state seizure of private property in the 17-acre expansion zone for Columbia’s project—in exchange for market-rate compensation—was illegal because, Justice James Catterson wrote, the expansion of an elite private university does not constitute a “public use,” and the Empire State Development Corporation’s designation of the neighborhood as “blighted” was made “in bad faith.”
ESDC, which approved eminent domain for the project in December 2008, said it would appeal the decision to the state’s highest court, the Court of Appeals, which recently ruled in favor of eminent domain for the controversial Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn.
“Columbia is not a party in this litigation,” University spokesperson Victoria Benitez wrote in an e-mail. “The ESDC has issued a statement of its intent to appeal and we support that decision.” She added that preconstruction and demolition will continue for the planned Jerome L. Greene Science Center, located on property Columbia already owns.
Bollinger said last week that obtaining the remaining properties—Columbia already owns over 90 percent of the land in the expansion zone—was crucial, and without it, the expansion might not proceed.
“The University has been able to reach mutually beneficial agreements with dozens of the commercial property owners in the area, and we continue to hope to reach such agreements with the last two,” Benitez wrote.
But Saturday’s speakers railed against the procedure. State Senator Bill Perkins (D-West Harlem) likened the threat of eminent domain to “using a gun in a mugging. … You don’t always have to use the gun. People say, ‘Here, take my money.”
Holding up a sign that read “Harlem is not for sale, it’s our home,” Perkins said to laughter from the crowd, “There’s not much more to say.”
Many attendees compared the court victory—which came as a surprise to many—as a modern-day David and Goliath story, and credited it to strong community mobilization.
“The lesson here is about struggle, that if a community struggles against seemingly gigantic, David and Goliath odds, you will prevail,” said Nellie Bailey, Harlem Tenants Council president and a member of the Coalition to Preserve Community, adding, “Power concedes nothing without a demand.”
Norman Siegel, attorney for Tuck-It-Away Self-Storage owner Nick Sprayregen—who, along with gas station owners Gurnam Singh and Parminder Kaur, was one of the plaintiffs in the cases the Appellate Division decided—added, “As a civil rights lawyer, by ideal situation is what we’ve had the past five years—the community coming together.”
“When it was obvious the deck was stacked against us, he nevertheless persevered,” Perkins said of Siegel. “Nothing could have exemplified the stacked deck more than this case. There was collusion between Columbia and the state to create a definition of blight [that would find blight] where there was no blight. It was almost like saying it was night when the sun was out.”
On the steps of Bollinger’s house, overlooking Morningside Park and Central Harlem, the Rev. Earl Kooperkamp, also a CPC member, read from the biblical verse on David and Goliath.
“We don’t want to kill Goliath, but we need Goliath to learn to be a good neighbor and play nice with this neighborhood,” Kooperkamp said.
Erik Reinbergs, CC ’11 and a member of the Student Coalition on Expansion & Gentrification, said it was also important to send a message to Bollinger that not all students support the expansion.
“Columbia says this is being done in the students’ name, and that’s not true,” Reinbergs said.
Protesters referenced the 1968 backlash against the University’s plans to build a gym in Morningside Park as precedent for opposition halting a development plan.
“The gym was underway before the community actually started to fight back,” CPC member Mario Mazzoni said. “We have a five-year jump start on that. It’s by no means a done deal, and we will win this fight.”
“The most important ingredient is stamina,” Siegel said. “We have to outlast our opponent, and our opponent is formidable.”
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