West Harlem’s holdouts will have to get out of Columbia University’s way.
State officials yesterday approved the university’s use of eminent domain to buy the last parcels of land in its massive plan to expand northward by developing a new, 17-acre campus.
The approval by the Empire State Development Corp. was the last hurdle Columbia needed to clear to proceed with the giant project. The City Council backed the new campus last year.
Lawyers for the two holdouts – a pair of gas stations on West 125th Street and a storage business on Broadway between 131st and 132nd streets – vowed to fight on, despite the 6-0 vote by the ESDC’s board.
“It’s unfair,” said Aman Kaur, 17, whose dad, Gurman Singh, owns the two gas stations.
“My parents are going to court and fight,” Aman said. “It’s the only thing we have. We just can’t let it go.”
Columbia has already bought more than 60 properties in the area, roughly bounded by West 125th Street on the south, West 133rd Street on the north, and Broadway and 12th Avenue on the east and west.
State Sen. Bill Perkins (D-Manhattan) called Columbia a “bully” for threatening to use eminent domain against landowners reluctant to sell. He called the university “a bad neighbor.”
“It’s been an exhausting battle,” said Nick Sprayregan, who, despite what he calls “unrelenting pressure from Columbia,” has refused to sell his business, Tuck-It-Away Storage, on Broadway between 131st and 132nd streets.
While Columbia will be able to evict businesses from the site, the ESDC’s resolution yesterday allows tenants of seven residential buildings on the site to stay at least until 2018.
“We are pleased the Empire State Development Corporation has approved the general project plan,” the university said in a statement.
Columbia’s $6.3 billion expansion – entirely funded by the university – is expected to provide 14,000 construction jobs and 6,000 permanent university jobs.
Construction is many months off and the project will be built in two phases over the next 25 years. The first phase is geographically the largest, and will involve big excavations on a scale similar to Ground Zero.