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W.S.V. residents sue N.Y.U. to save garden, playground

The brochure for Washington Square Village given to an original tenant who moved into the then privately owned complex in 1958 included an image showing a third, long, slab building on what is today the southern N.Y.U. superblock, above left. That third slab building was never constructed; instead the southern superblock is today home to Silver Towers and N.Y.U.’s Coles gym. The brochure also touted the complex’s “acres of landscaping,” right, which was part of the so-called “tower in the park” design that was then in vogue as cutting-edge urban living. The complex’s logo, right, evoked the original plan for three slab buildings.

BY LINCOLN ANDERSON  |  Arguing that the threatened Sasaki Garden and the Key Park playground are “required” parts of their residential experience in Washington Square Village, the complex’s rent-stabilized tenants have filed a lawsuit to block New York University’s development plans on their superblock.

The suit was filed in State Supreme Court last Friday. The plaintiffs are WSV Green Neighbors, Inc., a nonprofit corporation, along with four residents of the complex, Bertha Chase, Judy Kelly Magida, Timothy Healy and Anna Lervold. They have retained attorney Lawrence B. Goldberg, who also lives in the complex. Goldberg is a former member of Community Board 2 and is president of Friends of LaGuardia Place.

Goldberg went to court Tuesday seeking a temporary restraining order against the N.Y.U. project. But Justice Ellen Coin denied the request, according to Goldberg, on the grounds that she felt “the threat didn’t seem imminent.”

N.Y.U. attorneys vehemently opposed granting the T.R.O., Goldberg said, noting it was a long argument before the bench. However, should it appear that the university is moving to start construction, or there are any “imminent changes in circumstances,” Goldberg assured, he’ll immediately return to court to seek a restraining order again. The next scheduled court date is in October.

About 25 to 30 percent of the N.Y.U.-owned complex’s units, or about 300 to 350 apartments, are rent-stabilized and occupied by non-university-affiliated tenants, according to Goldberg. About 40 percent of the units are home to N.Y.U. faculty, graduate students and university personnel. There are also a significant number of empty, warehoused apartments, Goldberg alleged.

The lawsuit contends that, under the Rent Stabilization Law, rent-regulated tenants, in addition to being entitled to those services expressly stated in their leases, are also entitled to so-called “ancillary services” — meaning services that were in place when they moved in. These would include, the suit says, the Sasaki Garden and the Key Park, which are both located in the central courtyard of the complex, on N.Y.U.’s north superblock, between Bleecker and W. Third Sts. and Mercer St. and LaGuardia Place. These ancillary services — which really are, in fact, “required services” under the law — must be kept, the suit charges.

“The concept is to keep all the Sasaki Garden and the Key Park for the use of the Washington Square Village tenants,” Goldberg said. “N.Y.U. wants to make it public to take the tenants’ rights,” he said of these amenities.

Coincidentally, Goldberg noted, two years ago, the university removed signs saying the Sasaki Garden was private.

“This has been a long time figuring this out by them,” he said of N.Y.U. “Very clever by N.Y.U.,” he said of the signs’ removal.

In addition to adding the two buildings, N.Y.U.’s plans call for re-landscaping the courtyard into a publicly accessible “Philosophy Garden.”

The residents’ suit also argues that Washington Square Village’s so-called “tower in the park” construction style — with its open spaces — was an existing condition, too, when they moved in, and so must be kept.

Goldberg said the lawsuit’s intention isn’t so much to “block the Boomerangs” — that is, the two new buildings N.Y.U. wants to add in Washington Square Village’s courtyard — but “to preserve what we have — the air, the light and the recreational space that the tenants have enjoyed for 50 years.”

The individually named plaintiffs in the suit have lived in the housing complex from 35 to 50 years.

In her affidavit, Bertha Chase submitted the original Washington Square Village apartment complex brochure she received when she moved into her home there in 1958. The complex was then privately owned by the Paul Tishman Company.

Bold-print headlines in the original owners’ brochure  — “A New Kind of Urban Living,” “Acres of Landscaping” — trumpet the complex’s then cutting-edge attractions.

“Here the city has been opened up as never before to let in air and light and provide space,” the brochure’s text reads. “Here has been created not just another place to live but a new neighborhood, a new community, a new spirit in the metropolis…humanized, personalized, designed to give each individual a distinct and separate spaciousness to identify as his own. In Washington Square Village, for the first time, you will find a community designed to meet the needs of modern city living. …”

Of the “tower in the park” construction, the brochure effuses, “Living amid a park-like landscape in the center of New York City seems beyond possibility and yet this is one of the most amazing accomplishments of Washington Square Village. Of its twelve acres of land, the buildings themselves occupy only thirty percent of the area. … Thus, one of the principal needs of the urban citizen has been generously solved in the green and flowering acreage of Washington Square Village.”

N.Y.U. bought Washington Square Village in 1964.

The WSV Green Neighbors lawsuit cites legal precedent — a 1980s case where rent-stabilized tenants in Tudor City in East Midtown Manhattan defeated an effort to build a new residential tower in Tudor City’s park, on the grounds the park was a required service that existed when they moved in. Like Washington Square Village, Tudor City was “marketed as a planned community,” the WSV Green Neighbors’ suit states.

“Based on prior law, the rent-stabilized tenants of Washington Square Village have a strong case to preserve our longtime services,” Goldberg said.

John Beckman, the university’s spokesperson, said, “N.Y.U. does not believe the claims made in this lawsuit stand up to close scrutiny. First, it is hard to see how improving open space and making it more accessible — as N.Y.U.’s plan does — can be described as depriving residents of open space. And second, our plans do not call for construction on the north block before 2021.

“N.Y.U.’s proposals emerged from years of thoughtful planning and community consultation, and have been through a thorough, rigorous, multi-month city approvals process that resulted in approvals from the the City Planning Commission and the City Council,” Beckman said, adding, “We expect that we will ultimately prevail in court.”

Additionally, a joint lawsuit against the university plan is reportedly in the works by N.Y.U. FASP (Faculty Against the Sexton Plan) and the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, but nothing has been filed yet.

“We have 120 days from the approval” to sue, noted Andrew Berman, G.V.S.H.P.’s executive director. The City Council, last month, approved the N.Y.U. plan to add nearly 2 million square feet of development space to the university’s two South Village superblocks.