A state court in New York has blocked the state from using eminent domain to acquire properties in a West Harlem neighborhood on behalf of Columbia University, faulting the state’s efforts to designate the area as blighted and accusing the university of neglecting properties it has already acquired in the area.
Columbia has been planning a $6.3-billion satellite campus in the neighborhood, known as Manhattanville, and already owns most of the 17-acre tract it wants to build on.
In a 3-to-2 decision released on Thursday, the Appellate Division of the State Supreme Court ruled that the state’s urban-development arm had acted unconstitutionally in trying to designate the neighborhood a blighted area. Under state law, the development agency, known as the Empire State Development Corporation, or ESDC, can acquire blighted or deteriorating property to “improve” for educational, cultural, recreational, or other civic purposes.
Squeezed for space, the university started its quest to expand into Manhattanville in 2001. Administrators saw the tract as a bridge between the university’s Morningside Heights campus and a health-science complex to the north.
At the time the expansion plan began, Columbia already owned two properties in the area, and in 2002, it began acquiring more. It now owns more than 90 percent of the Manhattanville tract, but has been unable to reach deals with the owners of several self-storage facilities and other properties within the site.
The court’s decision does not necessarily halt the expansion plan. The university could yet work out a deal with the owners of the remaining properties or build around them.
In the majority opinion, Justice James M. Catterson wrote that once the state had committed to allowing Columbia to take over the neighborhood, it was “compelled to engineer a public purpose for a quintessentially private development: eradication of blight.”
After Columbia had begun purchasing properties in the neighborhood, it allowed its properties to deteriorate, the ruling says.
“It is apparent from the record that ESDC had no intention of determining if Manhattanville was blighted prior to, or apart from Columbia’s control of the area,” he wrote. “The petitioners clearly demonstrate that Columbia … let water-infiltration conditions in property it acquired go unaddressed, even when minor and economically rational repairs could arrest deterioration.”
It also says Columbia ignored building-code violations and “let tenants use premises in violation of local codes and ordinances by parking cars on sidewalks and obstructing fire exits, and maintaining garbage and debris in certain buildings over a period of years.”
One of the other justices in the majority decision joined in Justice Catterson’s opinion, and the third wrote a concurring opinion.
In an e-mail message, Robert Hornsby, a spokesman for Columbia, said that the university had no comment on the ruling and pointed out that the university was not a party in the lawsuit.
Warner Johnston, a spokesman for the Empire State Development Corporation, said that the decision was “wrong and inconsistent with established law” and rulings by New York Court of Appeals, the state’s highest court. He said the agency would appeal the lower court’s decision.