Ukrainians among groups continuing opposition to Cooper Union plan (03/10/02)

Ukrainians among groups continuing opposition to Cooper Union plan

by Andrew Nynka

PARSIPPANY, N.J. - Although the New York City street named in honor of Taras Shevchenko is seemingly no longer a potential target of The Cooper Union, local community organizations, together with the Shevchenko Preservation Committee acting on behalf of the East Village's Ukrainian community, have stepped up their opposition to the school's development plan in a Joint Task Force Position Statement.

Ukrainian residents of the Village, many of whom have lived in the neighborhood for over 50 years, argue that much of the school's plan, centered on increasing the retail and commercial space in order to ease their financial difficulties, will create a corporate environment that will push long-time residents out of the area.

Currently, the school is waiting for the Department of City Planning (DCP) to certify the school's application as complete. The hold-up, said Robyn Stein of the DCP's press office, is the completion of the environmental review.

Clair McCarthy, director of communications for The Cooper Union, said the school still has some loose ends to tie up regarding the environmental review and once this is taken care of school officials can go ahead with the certification of the application.

Once this certification is complete and the paperwork filed and tagged with a specific application number, the community boards and borough presidents of the affected areas submit their recommendations on the matter and the procedure for zoning changes begins.

Although the clock on the process has yet to start ticking, community officials have gone ahead and, by a unanimous vote of two community boards - with one member abstaining - upheld the Task Force Position Statement.

The one abstention came from Community Board 3, which voted on February 19 to support the statement, while the unanimous vote of Community Board 2 came on February 21.

The Cooper Square Committee and the Good Ole Lower East Side (GOLES) organizations also joined the Coalition to Save the East Village in opposing the school's current development plans.

The task force has consistently made it known that its opposition centers on the school's current plan and the process the school has taken to make its plan public.

The Draft Analysis of The Cooper Union GLSDP, approved by the Joint Task Force of Community Boards 2 and 3 on February 4, said, "The community is unanimously in favor of the continued existence and success of Cooper Union as an educational institution." However, the draft continued, the current plan "is a scheme more suited to midtown development and totally inharmonious to the Village and Lower East Side neighborhoods."

"We recognize that the basic premise of zoning law is to rezone property due to changing land use and conditions or for redevelopment purposes. Enhancing a private developer's bottom line is not part of this equation. We feel it would well serve all concerned if the City Planning Commission would convey these principles of zoning to Cooper which has failed to recognize them in our months of intense dialogue and review," the draft continued.

Ms. McCarthy declined to comment on the Task Force statement.

But the draft went further than simply criticizing the GLSDP; it gave school officials four points which the community boards consider necessary in order to "arrive at an alternative plan acceptable to the Task Force."

Key among them was the proposal to use the Astor Place parking lot site located on the corner of Lafayette Street and Astor Place, not the Engineering site located on the corner of Fourth Avenue and Eighth Street, in the GLSDP - a move the school had opposed in the past, saying that the Astor Place site was not part of their development plans.

The school had Astor Place set aside as the proposed site of a new hotel development project until plans fell through in late June.

The Task Force statement also called for: the zoning of the Engineering site retained at its current level and any development on the site setback to at least the original roadbed of Stuyvesant Street; a restrictive covenant included in the approval of the GLSDP prohibiting the development or sale of air rights using the unused Floor Area Ratio (FAR) from the Foundation Building located on the corner of Third Avenue and Eighth Street; and no change in the current lease restriction at the Hewitt site - thereby prohibiting The Cooper Union's proposed retail use on the Third Avenue frontage.

Anna Sawaryn, chair of the Coalition to Save the East Village, which encompasses various East Village organizations - among them the Shevchenko Preservation Committee - stressed that the issues facing the Ukrainian community go beyond Taras Shevchenko Place. According to Ms. Sawaryn, the many Ukrainian shops and residents of the neighborhood would be adversely affected if The Cooper Union's GLSDP was accepted as it currently stands.

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