Fordham Has Big Plans for Lincoln Square Campus

Fordham University is charging ahead with plans to add up to 2 million square feet to its modest Lincoln Square campus, tripling the size of the Jesuit institution's facilities while building a giant complex of modern structures on the mostly undeveloped site. The project, which faces its first public hearing in September, re-envisions the 1960s-style campus, adding dorms, classroom space, and private condominium towers.

"We have approximately 106 gross square feet per student, while the other universities in Manhattan average 388 gross square feet per student," an associate vice president at Fordham, Joseph Muriana, said. The vision for its West Side campus — a superblock between 60th and 62nd streets bounded by Amsterdam and Columbus avenues — would transform the site into a complex lined with towering dorms, a new building for a law school, a campus center, and two private residential skyscrapers.

Fordham is one of a fleet of colleges and universities in New York City looking to expand in Manhattan. Citing competition from other schools and a need to increase academic programming, the institutions are seeking to build at the very time that real estate prices are soaring and the desire for developable land is at an all-time high.

The schools include Columbia University, which is pushing forward a 17-acre expansion into West Harlem, and New York University, which has a goal of increasing its space by one-third over the next 25 years. Other big developments include City University of New York's $350 million expansion of John Jay College, a new scientific research building for the CUNY Graduate Center, and new space in the works for New York Law School and the New School.

The motive behind Fordham mirrors that of the other institutions: Increased demand at its Lincoln Center campus has left the undergraduate and graduate school well past the intended capacity, and the school wants to boost its academic offerings. The majority of the university is housed in an 85-acre site in the Bronx, and the school also has a satellite campus in Tarrytown.

While NYU and Columbia are rapidly expanding beyond their original campuses, Fordham vows to stay within its existing footprint. The university is confining its construction to infill development at the site, which was first acquired in the 1950s from the city for roughly $2.5 million. Fordham acquired the site after the city used eminent domain to claim the area before the creation of Lincoln Center.

Even though Fordham is limiting its growth to within its own campus, its proposal has sparked heavy criticism in the surrounding community, where neighbors claim the development would be an overwhelming "fortress" that would clash with the scale and character of the neighborhood.

Residents of the neighboring buildings have been meeting for more than a year to discuss the proposal, and residents of a condominium building on the northeast corner of the superblock by 62nd Street and Amsterdam Avenue, the Alfred, have hired a lawyer to attempt to force the university to downsize the project.

"Fordham is really trying to push forward a project that will overwhelm the community in terms of services, traffic, and other aspects of our infrastructure," a resident who has been vocal in criticizing the plan, Michael Groll, said. "They want to put up buildings along Columbus Avenue that would create a fortress-like superblock."

Mr. Groll was also critical of the university's plan to sell off a portion of the site to private condominium developers to raise revenue. The concept is unethical, he said, given that Fordham acquired the site with the understanding that it be used for educational purposes.

Other critics contend the sale would actually be illegal, as a provision in the original site plan prevents Fordham from selling the land for private development.

"As far as we're concerned, legally they have no right to sell this property," the president of the condominium association at the Alfred, Sidney Goldfischer, said.

Residents at the Alfred have hired a real estate attorney, Elliott Meisel, who said he is considering taking legal action on the issue.

Fordham rejects this argument, pointing out that the original city-administered site plan from the 1950s has expired. "We've been running lots of education programs, graduated thousands of people, and there are no restrictions anymore — we kept our agreement with the city," Mr. Muriana said.

Mr. Muriana said the university must sell the land so it can use the additional revenue to help pay for the new campus, which expected to cost $2 billion to $3 billion to construct and will serve more than 10,000 students. "When the campus was designed in the 1960s, it was designed for about 3,500 students," he said. "We're now close to 8,000."

Completion of the project is years off — a scoping document released by the Department of City Planning last month put the project end-point at 2032 — though Mr. Muriana said the university would likely start construction shortly after the projected is approved. It must pass through the city's land-use review process, which includes approval from the City Planning Commission and the City Council.

Architects and city officials tout academic expansions as economic generators and magnets to draw youth and create neighborhood vitality.

"Universities are a vital part of the city's intellectual and economic fabric — and we have to recognize that they attract students and generate ideas," an informal adviser to Mayor Bloomberg who is a public policy professor at NYU, Mitchell Moss, said.

Correction from August 2, 2007: Informal adviser is Mitchell Moss's association with Mayor Bloomberg. His association with the mayor was misstated in an article on page 14 of the July 26 Sun.