Controversy Brews Over NYU's Plan for the Village

With many residents of the "quaint and offbeat city quarter" vehemently fighting New York University's plans, "two high-profile politicians who aspire to become the next mayor - Christine C. Quinn, the City Council speaker, and Scott M. Stringer, the Manhattan borough president," are being asked to weigh in, reports Joseph Berger. In NYU's corner are the "university board of trustees that includes real estate developers and businesspeople who contribute to campaigns."

Mr. Stringer has already voiced reservations about the scale of the planned development, and is seeking to forge a compromise. However the local community board's decision, although advisory, "recommended unanimously last month that the Council reject the university's plan."

According to Berger, the repercussions of the standoff will be felt far outside the Village. "While the debate over the proposal is focused on the future of Greenwich Village, N.Y.U.'s ambitious plan also has wider implications for other parts of Manhattan and for Brooklyn. The university has an engineering campus in Downtown Brooklyn, now called Polytechnic Institute, that it absorbed; influential urban-design experts, like Vin Cippola, the president of the Municipal Art Society, have urged the university to focus its expansion there. "