Let the games begin! Tomorrow the latest stage of the NYU 2031 20-year expansion marathon kicks off, and this week's big event is the pre-ULURP scoping session. In play will be the always exciting CEQR (City Environmental Quality Review) with the focus on the Core, those two super-duper blocks where major changes are on the boards. Team Big Purple, led by a crew of strategic thinkers from AKRF, will face off before a battalion of local Shadow Seekers, FAR busters and other assorted technical commenters in two sessions, one at 2PM and the other at 6PM. The match-ups take place at 22 Reade Street, in the venerable City Planning arena.
The opposing teams will skirmish over 19 separate issues including Open Space, Socioeconomic Conditions, Hazardous Materials and the always contentious Construction Impacts, all outlined in the illuminating Draft Scope of Work. Given the 19-year phasing of NYU's plan?not to mention the proposed addition of 2.5 million square feet for academic, residential and other assorted uses?the match-up could be a rowdy one. Rumblings from the local locker room are centering on the battle over Mercer Street open spaces.
Up on the North Block, where NYU says the main construction won't begin until 2021, tykes and toddlers are already crying over lost playgrounds, some of which will be torn asunder when a temporary 30,000 square foot athletic center gets slotted in between the ramparts of Washington Square Village. That new gym will be needed to replace the soon-to-come-down Coles Athletic Center, next to the site where pooches play and where NYU hopes its Big Zipper will rise. One thing's for certain: a whole platoon of project managers will be needed to get this epic scheme off the ground.
· Core Overview [NYU 2031]
· Final Draft Scope of Work [NYU Community Affairs]
· NYU 2031 coverage [Curbed]
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