Property owners challenge ESDC’s authority to use eminent domain on behalf of Columbia. Looking to expand in West Harlem, Columbia University teamed up with the City’s Economic Development Corporation in 2001 to redevelop the area. Not long after, EDC issued a West Harlem Master Plan. The plan stated that West Harlem could be redeveloped through rezoning, and did not mention any blighted conditions in Manhattanville. Columbia began purchasing property in the area in 2002 for its own redevelopment and expansion plan. The seventeen-acre project site, bounded by West 133rd Street on the north, West 125th Street on the south, Broadway and Old Broadway on the east, and Twelfth Avenue on the west, would include sixteen new buildings, and a contiguous below-grade support facility.

Two years after the purchasing began, Columbia met with the Empire State Development Corporation and EDC to discuss Columbia’s plan and the condemnation of land. Subsequently, EDC issued a study concluding the area was blighted. ESDC retained Columbia’s consultant, who also found the area suffered from blight. ESDC later commissioned a second blight study with a consultant without ties to Columbia. The study also found blighted conditions throughout the area. Seven months after the second study, ESDC authorized the acquisition of certain property through eminent domain, and several affected property owners filed petitions challenging the determination. (more…)

Gail Benjamin and Anthony Crowell answer questions from Council Members on September 7, 2022. The Council voted to approve their nominations to the City Planning Commission a week later. Image Credit: City Council

On September 14, 2022, the City Council voted to approve Gail Benjamin and Anthony Crowell to the New York City Planning Commission. Earlier that same day, the City Council Committee on Rules, Privileges, and Elections also voted in favor following a hearing a week earlier. (more…)

Even though the Supreme Court struck down race-based land use controls over a hundred years ago in Buchanan v. Warley, 245 U.S. 60 (1917) it has long been known that zoning continues to create or increase racial and economic segregation. Today communities across the U.S. are reexamining their zoning regulations to create more equal, equitable, inclusive, and resilient communities by removing requirements, limitations, or prohibitions that disproportionately and negatively impact individuals based on race or class. (more…)

Willis Avenue Bridge. Image Credit: Google Maps.

Construction work on the Willis Avenue Bridge caused flooding on adjacent property. In March 2007, the City acquired by condemnation property adjacent to the property owned by 82 Willis, LLC. The condemnation was in connection with the City’s reconstruction of the Willis Avenue Bridge over the Harlem River. (more…)

Storage jar found in Seneca Village, part of the Seneca Village Unearthed online exhibit. Image Credit: LPC

The exhibited artifacts will help establish what life was really like for middle-class African American families in Seneca Village. On February 20, 2020, Landmarks Preservation Commission announced the launch of Seneca Village Unearthed, an online exhibit and collection of nearly three hundred artifacts from Seneca Village.  Seneca Village, formerly located in what is now Central Park, was once New York City’s largest community of free African American landowners in the mid-nineteenth century. The village was founded in the 1820s in what was then a rural area north of the city’s center located today between 82nd and 89th Street and Central Park West and the Great Lawn. (more…)