Right-sized on Broadway. (DCP)

Back in 2007, in order to win his vote for Columbia's contentious Manhattanville rezoning, Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer got the city to agree to rezone the blocks north of the new 17-acre campus as well, a stanch against over development. Today, the borough president gets to vote on the rezoning he requested for West Harlem, and he is touting it as a triumph of community planning.

"This rezoning reflects the input of thousands of stakeholders in West Harlem and five years of work toward crafting a community-based planning consensus that could be a model for the rest of our City," Mr. Stringer said in an email. "It is a promise kept to the residents of West Harlem—and a proud moment for all who are involved."

Like many parts of the city, the zoning has not been updated since 1961. The Department of City Planning has created, through a multi-year consultation with the community, a contextual zoning package that will largely maintain the same density of development in the neighborhood while imposing new height limits and street wall requirements to ensure that sliver buildings and other uncharacteristic buildings cannot be built.

The rezoning covers 90 blocks stretching from 126th Street up to 155th Street, running west from Edgecombe, Bradhurt, Amsterdam and St. Nicholas avenues to the river. Excluded from this area is the the campuses of City College and Columbia's Manhattanville project, which is south of 133rd Street.

West of Broadway, the buildings are the biggest, rising to 105 feet on the side streets and 120 feet on the avenues, but buildings have a required setback between 60 and 85 feet. They must now be built up to the sidewalk, as is the case in most of Manhattan, thus presenting developers from stepping back to build taller towers. East of Broadway, the same street wall requirements exist, though the buildings are lower, ranging from height limits of 70 to 80 feet, with setbacks between 40 and 60 feet. This is meant to reflect the rowhouse and walk-up scale of the area.

"This historic undertaking will protect the distinctive residential character of this neighborhood for decades to come," Mr. Stringer said.

Special districts have been carved out for 145th Street, the area's main commercial thoroughfare, and a pocket of manufacturing around 126th Street and Amsterdam Avenue. Along 145th Street, a few select sites have been upzoned, to provide for new development, which will be part of the city's inclusionary housing program, which means that in exchange for a bonus to build bigger, developers must make 20 percent of their units affordable. These sites could rise as high as 170 feet with the inclusion of the affordable housing.

The 126th Street area had been traditionally used for manufacturing, but the plan calls for a new mixed use district that would allow housing, commercial and light manufacturing uses to coexist. This is not unlike the mix of uses just across the street in Columbia's new campus.

"We feel very comfortable that this plan will protect the neighborhood from some of the development we've seen elsewhere in the city," Reverend Georgiette Morgan-Thomas, chair of the local community board, told The Observer. She pointed to two projects in particular, Aerial East and Aerial West, hulking towers developed around 100th Street by Extell Development as the kind of egregious development the community wanted to avoid.

The board spent three years developing a model for the rezoning with the help of the Department of City Planning and the borough president. "Scott and City Planning have done an extraordinary job working with the community to craft this plan," Ms. Morgan-Thomas said.

"It's always a great place to be to know you've done something for the community, something that will truly protect it," she added. "When we're all gone, the zoning will still be in place, along with the buildings as they've always been."

Yesterday we reported that Columbia University has won LEED ND Platinum for its Manhattanville campus, in recognition for the sustainability goals the school has set out for its new 17-acre campus off 125th Street. A big part of that is the fancy green buildings the school will be building on the site, the first of which is the Jerome L. Greene Science Center (dubbed the Mind-Brain Institute) designed by Pritzker Prize winner and Times HQ architect Renzo Piano, who also helped created the LEED-certified master plan. The project is slowly taking shape in Harlem, but Columbia provided us with this cool video that shows the building coming together in all of one minute, 17 seconds.

All the while, Columbia has gone about the work of creating the most environmentally progressive neighborhood in the entire five boroughs, all from whole cloth.

Last week, the U.S. Green Building Council awarded Columbia’s new campus with LEED ND Platinum, the highest rating in the council's new-ish neighborhood development program. It is only the fifth project in the state to earn such recognition, and the first to achieve LEED ND Platinum. The designation means that the project has embraced the goals of accessibility, density, design and environmental efficiency, creating a model for future development.

"We like to think of it as a three-legged stool: environment, economy, equity," Jason Hercules, director of the LEED ND program, told The Observer. "Manhattanville excelled in all three."

LEED ratings have become a practical necessity for any new development in the city, ranging from university buildings to office towers to luxury condos. Even novel projects, like single-family homes, are pursuing this sheen of green, and thanks to Local Law 86, every new city building achieves the rating as well.

Now, to broaden its influence and further promote dense, sustainable growth throughout the country, the Green Building Council created the LEED ND program. Developers get points for everything ranging from transportation proximity to clean construction practices to the size of the blocks within the development—bigger ones tend to encourage out-of-scale superblocks.

Columbia's Manhattanville plan, created by SOM and Renzo Piano, entered the program five years ago, shortly after the rezoning was approved by the city. "Because of our serious commitment to sustainable design, we wanted this project to be seriously considered from the start," said Joseph Ienuso, senior vice president for facilities. "It’s a very rigorous process, we’ve been working on it five years."

The campus actually served as a pilot project for the council, helping it to refine exactly what criteria would be used to rate other neighborhoods in the program. "Theirs was a project that fit well with the goals of the program," Mr. Hercules said. "It was a shared learning experience." (This involvement had no bearing on Columbia’s receiving of the highest rating, Mr. Hercules said.)

“This is a milestone for Columbia not only because we are building a future in our home community in New York," university president Lee Bollinger said in a statement, "but because we are doing so with a commitment to the best urban planning principles and the highest quality architecture that reflect both the core values of city life and the fundamental need for a more sustainable society."

Manhattanville gets considerable points for many of the factors that make Manhattan and the rest of New York an inherently sustainable place to be, such as compact blocks, diversity of building types and proximity to robust transportation options. Still, Mr. Hercules said these do not guarantee a project scoring well or even making the cut. "Otherwise everything would be LEED certified," he said. "Somethings are easy in New York, others are hard."

Affordable housing is a big one. Critics have complained that there was not enough in the university's plan, and while it could not include any within the project, there is ample faculty housing (cutting down on commutes) as well as a $1 million affordable housing fund that will help seed local projects.

But those features are fairly standard. It is the more innovative commitments that pushed the Manhattanville campus to outperform others, such as a promise to build a minimum of 84 percent of its buildings to high sustainability standards (LEED Silver or above). An innovative below-grade service network, that keeps maintenance and delivery work off the streets, was given favorable marks. The possible inclusion of ferry service from the pier at 125th Street was another highlight, as were job training programs both within the campus and without.

"There’s a balance that needs to be made when new and larger projects come in," Mr. Hercules said, touching on the topic of gentrification that some locals feel remains unaddressed. "But the program considers all of these issues, and we feel this project made steps in the right direction."

One of the most unique features of the Manhattanville project, especially given its size and the fact it will be in progress for decades, is the commitment to clean construction practices. This involves everything from acoustical baffling added to extra-high construction fencing, which combined keep down noise and debris from spreading into the neighborhood, to using low sulfur fuel in the construction equipment. "One thing that’s pretty obvious when you’re at our site is you don’t see the puffs of black smoke you see at a lot of other construction site around the city," Mr. Ienuso said. The equipment is also washed down before leaving the site, so as not to track dust throughout the neighborhood.

"These things may seem small, but they add up," Mr. Ienuso said.

One person who had a hard time doing the math was State Senator Bill Perkins, who represents the Manhattanville neighborhood and has been an outspoken critic of the project. He said while the community might get some ancillary benefits from the LEED recognition, such as cleaner air and maybe a few jobs, it was primarily the university that would be benefiting, this despite the fact that it was community outcry that forced the university to embrace more sustainable practices.

"The neighborhood will be built to a better standard, but the community will not be here to enjoy it," Senator Perkins said. "It's almost like I picked the cotton but you get to wear the shirt."

Two things not factored into the Green Building Council's calculations were the case of eminent domain and the fatal accident this spring. On the issue of eminent domain, Mr. Hercules said it was "one factor among many."

"That’s something that’s somewhat outside the scope of our rating system," he continued. "Obviously, it’s important how a development is going to get control of their site. We obviously wouldn’t encourage anything that would disenfranchise anyone in the community. But once the developer has the property, it’s out roll to encourage a sustainable community."

This would not be the first time the council has overlooked such issues. The first project to ever receive LEED ND, back in 2009 was the city's plans for Willets Point—yet another eminent domain poster child.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

Inside the accident. (FDNY)

Blame it on the builders.

Breeze International, the firm demolishing a Manhattanville building for Columbia that collapsed yesterday and claimed one life, just released a statement addressing the cause of the accident. The firm's investigation found that an unusual construction configuration appears to be the reason the building was destabilized and collapsed.

Because the structural beam the demo crew severed was not properly connected to the rest of the structure, when it was cut, everything else came down around it. Breeze points to a lack of construction drawings from when the building was built between eight and 10 decades ago as to why the unusual connection was not initially recognized.

In other words, this appears to be an unfortunate, if unavoidable, construction accident. A Department of Buildings spokesperson said the city would be releasing its own assessment shortly.

Breeze International's full release is as follows:

First and foremost, everyone from the Breeze family would like to express our deepest heart felt condolences to the families of our deceased and injured workers.  These gentlemen have been with us for many years and our primary concern during the time of this terrible tragedy is with them and their families.

We did not respond yesterday to the requests for comments because we were first focused on addressing the needs of the families of our workers.  Secondly, our attention was required with the investigation that was being conducted by our engineers and the forensic engineers from the Department of Buildings to determine the cause of this terrible accident.  We have and will continue to completely cooperate in any way we can with the Department of Buildings and OSHA investigators.

The investigation conducted to date has led all of the parties involved to believe that this accident was the result of an unknown, unusual, latent condition in one of the structural beams.

In normal construction practice, structural beams running horizontally are joined together at a vertical column.  All of the beams and columns being removed by Breeze at this building were constructed in this manner.  The horizontal beam that failed, however, was not joined with the other beam at the column.  Instead, the beam being cut carried past the column and was joined to the other horizontal beam by a splice with bolts that was encased in 2 feet of concrete.  Because this was a century old building, the bolts in the splice apparently failed and could not carry the load that was transferred to the splice and the bolts when the beam was cut.  Once again, because of the age of the building, no structural drawings were available to show this unknown and latent condition buried in the concrete casing.  Neither Breeze nor its consulting engineers can recall ever encountering this type of a structural beam configuration at this type of a location.

Department of Buildings’ representatives have been conducting inspections of the site on a weekly basis and have been closely monitoring Breeze’s demolition activities, with our full cooperation.

The stop work order issued at this site on March 5 was rescinded only days after its issuance when the specifications that were supposedly violated were reviewed by a Department of Buildings supervisor.  This violation related to whether a particular type of rope was being used for the tie-off of a safety harness.  It was not related in any way to the structural beam issue that was apparently the cause of this accident.

The violation issued on March regarding Breeze’s alleged failure to notify the Department of Buildings of the commencement of demolition work was merely the result of a harmless clerical error as the Department was already actually aware of Breeze’s demolition work because Breeze is demolishing four other buildings on the same block as part of the same Columbia University project.  Once again, this violation had nothing to do with this accident.

Since 2009, Breeze has been exclusively run by Toby Romano, Jr.  His father, Toby Romano, Sr., is the individual that was the subject of the alleged criminal activities, however, the father has had no involvement with the company since 2009 and no involvement with this incident.

Breeze is a qualified, competent, responsible demolition contractor that has successfully and safely performed thousands of projects in New York City, many in locations far more congested and complex than this Columbia University project.  Unfortunately, this terrible accident was just that, an accident, one that was truly no one’s fault, but which, nonetheless, had tragic consequences for the Breeze family and our workers, about which we are all deeply saddened.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

Inspectors explore the accident. (Rob Bennet/WSJ)

Following today's warehouse collapse in Manhattanville that killed a construction worker, Columbia University released a statement expressing its sympathies for the family.

"First and foremost, our hearts go out to the family, friends and co-workers of the construction worker who was killed in this tragic incident, and our thoughts remain with the two other workers who were injured this morning and their loved ones," the university said in a brief statement.

The building was being taken down to make way for a public plaza that is part of the university's second phase, which remains years away. The scheduling of the construction work was not immediately clear—why demolish now to leave vacant for later.

A Columbia spokesperson declined to discuss the circumstance of the accident and whether the university shared any of the blame for what happened, though in the past a strict safety regimen at the site has been touted. The Department of Buildings said that its initial investigation determined that a structural beam had been cut, for reasons that remain unclear, which caused the rest of the building to come down around three construction workers who were trapped inside. Two of them survived.

“Once they cut that structural beam, the site became unstable and there was a collapse,” Buildings Commissioner Robert LiMandri told reporters at the site earlier today.

Columbia directed further comment to Land Lease, the international general contractor overseeing the demolition work. The firm hired Breeze International of Brooklyn to perform the job. Breeze had received two stop work orders on the project from the Department of Buildings for failure to notify the city that the work had commenced, but those violations were rectified shortly thereafter and the work resume.

Land Lease released a statement that recounted the details of the accident, noting that the building was between 80 and 100 years old and that Breeze had a full-time safety inspector on duty when the accident took place around 8 a.m. "We are working with Breeze, DOB and the BEST squad to determine how this incident occurred," the statement concluded, referring to the Department of Building's Building Enforcement Safety Team. "Our thoughts and prayers are with the deceased worker's family and the family of the injured along with all workers on site this morning."

This is not the first accident at the 17-acre Manhattanville site. Two years ago, a worker suffered a heart attack and fell down an elevator shaft during a different demolition project. Contractors promised to increase safety at the site following the incident, and workers said they were satisfied with the changes. That project was also handled by Breeze International.

Reporting contributed by Daniel Edward Rosen.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

The diminutive building before demolition. (Property Shark)

The collapsed structure. (DNAinfo)

The new Columbia campus in Manhattanville has had its share of problems from community protests to eminent domain lawsuits. Now comes the worst incident yet, as a building being demolished by the university collapsed today, trapping three construction workers inside, according to DNAinfo, one of whom died shortly after being pulled from the rubble.

DNAinfo had a dramatic account of the rescue effort at 604-606 West 131st Street:

The workers were cutting a structural beam at the building's perimeter wall when steel, concrete and red brick began raining down on them, officials from the Department of Buildings and FDNY said.

Two of the workers, including the individual who died, were partially buried by rubble near the center of the building. The third person was buried near the building's northwest corner about 50 feet from them, officials said.

Emergency responders had to tunnel under the rubble to reach the third man, who was trapped for about 45 minutes and suffered head injuries.

Both DNAinfo and The Real Deal note that the building had been hit with a number of building code violations.

In a statement, Borough Presiden Scott Stringer decried the incident, though he did not call out Columbia for any wrongdoing.

Columbia had not yet prepared a statement about the accident when contacted by The Observer.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

A "welcome" sign for the Lions.

Vincent Morgan is not happy with the West Harlem Local Development Corporation, which is the organization created to allocate $100 million contributed by Columbia University as part of its Manhattanville expansion plan.

“Over the past couple of years, we weren’t very clear, or at least I wasn’t very clear, as to how [it] was going to respond to determining how to best allocate those resources,” Mr. Morgan told The Observer last week. “Flash forward almost two years later ... we’re at a point where we aren’t even anywhere closer to the answers.”

Mr. Morgan, a Democrat running for Congress in the 15th District, which encompasses Harlem and several other neighborhoods in the northernmost reaches of the Upper West Side, has been quite vocal about his concerns with the West Harlem LDC. He told us he first became aware of the West Harlem LDC about five years ago when he was asked, as a graduate of the university, to testify at public hearings about the expansion process. He has remained involved in the expansion ever since through work in local community organizations, and now, as a candidate.

As part of ongoing negotiations about the controversial 6.8-million-square-foot expansion that took place between Columbia and the local community in 2006, the university promised to give back benefits valued at $150 million to the citizens of the neighborhood. However, the West Harlem LDC, which was formed to administer the majority of that money, has come under scrutiny from not just Mr. Morgan, but a growing number of elected officials, who have concerns about how the first funds sent by the school have been spent.

Columbia’s plan, which will take 20 years to complete and involves the construction of a new campus on the 17 acres stretching from 125th to 133rd streets between Broadway and 12th Avenue, was approved by the City Council in December 2007. One year later, the university issued a memorandum of understanding agreeing to give the West Harlem LDC $76 million in benefits and $20 million of in-kind contributions and services over the course of the project. So far, Columbia has given about $3.5 million to the West Harlem LDC, but the corporation has failed to account for any of that cash and hasn’t registered with the State Charities Bureau as required by law.

As a result, Attorney General Eric Schneiderman sent a subpoena to the corporation asking for documents and records relating to its work. Mr. Schneiderman declined to comment for this story, but sources within his office say the investigation began in response to his “independent concerns” about the LDC. If the group had registered with the Charities Bureau, as required by law, it would be compelled to make public disclosures about how it has spent the funds received so far.

Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, Congressman Charles Rangel, Assemblyman Keith Wright and Councilman Robert Jackson all have staff representatives on the West Harlem LDC’s board. “The staff member represents the elected official … I don’t think you have oversight and control; I think you have a seat at a board table,” Mr. Stringer told The Observer.

Mr. Stringer sent a pair of letters to the West Harlem LDC board early last year expressing his own concerns with the organization. “I want the LDC to meet the highest standards of accountability as well as efficiency,” he said. “Disbursement of money must be made transparently and without any conflict of interest.”

Earlier this month, Mr. Rangel told DNAinfo he welcomed the attorney general’s investigation, but isn’t concerned about wrongdoing at the LDC. “The attorney general would be derelict if someone makes an accusation and he doesn’t look into it,” Mr. Rangel said. A spokesperson for the congressman referred our questions about the LDC to Mr. Jackson and Donald Notice, the chairman of the corporation’s board. Mr. Jackson did not respond to our request for comment.

No contact information for Mr. Notice is listed on the LDC’s website, but he has a phone number and email address with West Harlem Group Assistance, another organization dedicated to providing “community-based housing services,” of which he is executive director. Mr. Notice has not responded to emails seeking comment.

At the end of October, he reported that the LDC was about a month away from having “everything in order” and that, so far, it has spent $302,000 on a jobs programs for teens and roughly $400,000 on consultants. “We’re working extremely hard,” Mr. Notice said. “We don’t want to spend money and not have an infrastructure in place.”

Mr. Morgan still wants answers. “They say that they’ve spent close to $400,000 on contractors and consultants, so I’d like to know who those consultants are, and I’d like to know how those consultants are selected, and I’d like to know what we got for $400,000,” he said.

To him, the main issues with the organization involve its lack of “transparency and accountability” and he describes the answers he’s seeking as quite simple. “You go down to some very basic answers that could be answered and given to the public in a way that is more transparent,” Mr. Morgan said with a laugh. “You know, basic answers that could easily be addressed if there was a web site.”

As of this writing, the official site of the West Harlem LDC contains one page with the heading “New York City and the Harlem Legacy,” followed by more than 2,000 words of nonsensical text. “Are you discover JCPenney printable coupon codes to conserve funds for you?Which provided by coupon sitescan be use to store at JCPenney.com,In further,there are discount codes,marketing codes and free transport codes for JCPenney can support bring the expenses down on brand names like Sephora and American Living,” it begins.

Manhattanville neighborhood of West Harlem.

Columbia issued a statement to The Observer that emphasized the university’s commitment to live up to its financial promises to the community and its lack of control over the West Harlem LDC. “In accordance with the Community Benefits Agreement (CBA), Columbia has contributed $3.55 million to the benefits fund to date,” the statement said. “It is important to note that the West Harlem Local Development Corp. (LDC) is legally and operationally independent of the university, which therefore has no representation on the LDC board. ... Columbia has been and remains committed to fulfilling its obligations under the CBA so that West Harlem continues to benefit from the University’s long-term investment in our local community.”

According to Mr. Morgan, even though the university and the LDC are separate, the issues with the West Harlem LDC are preventing the CBA from being effectively enforced. “The organization is not strong enough to really ask the right questions or demand the level of accountability necessary to enforce the community benefits agreement as a whole,” Mr. Morgan said.

Mr. Morgan believes Columbia and everyone else involved with the process have an obligation to resolve the situation at the LDC.

“I question every person affiliated with this,” he noted, “whether they be an elected official, or whether they be a private citizen to look at the entirety of the board and the process up to this point and just call it like it is and say that it’s dysfunctional.”

When we called Mr. Notice at his office at West Harlem Group Assistance two weeks ago, a woman answered the phone and told us he was “out this week.” She referred us to the group’s director of government and community relations, Stanley Gleaton. Mr. Gleaton declined to answer any questions or even confirm the spelling of his name. “Sorry,” he said before hanging up.

We tried reaching Mr. Notice again a week later, and the woman who answered the phone said he was “in training” and would return next Monday. We asked why he had been away from the group for two weeks.

“No, he was here last week,” she said.

hwalker@observer.com

At noon sharp, in the rectory next door, the Rev. Raymond Rafferty, the church's pastor, leaned forward, checked his watch and told The Observer gently, "Now, I really have to go." He had to prepare for the 12:10 Mass. The church holds services at least once daily during the week, and four times on Sunday. But the nave, which holds 400 people, is rarely full.

Once, Corpus Christi would have towered over the neighboring apartment buildings. But now it sits literally in the shadows of Columbia's Teachers' College across 121st Street, yet another totem of the university's swallowing of its upper Manhattan neighborhood.

Columbia, in fact, owns every building on both sides of the street, save for one co-op and the church. And several blocks to the northwest, the university is undertaking a massive 17-acre expansion into West Harlem that will inevitably mean years of demolitions and noisy construction. When it's finished, Columbia will have transformed an area once filled with auto mechanics and small manufacturers into a modern day "piazza," as its architect, the Italian Renzo Piano, describes it.

SLIDESHOW: E=MC Awesome: An Exclusive Look at Columbia's New Manhattanville Science Center

According to the most recent tax assessment rolls, provided by the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance and analyzed by The Observer, Columbia and N.Y.U. have amassed valuable properties rivaling the Catholic Church's long-held portfolio. The market value of city property owned by each of the three institutions appears to hover around $1.5 billion, based on the assessment rolls. The Catholic Church still claims a slight lead, but N.Y.U. and Columbia trail by only a couple of hundred million dollars each, and will almost certainly eclipse the church soon.

Though exact numbers are impossible to attain (the universities and the church own numerous properties under different registered names, and there are in total more than 11,000 registered property owners in the city), they clearly show that the gap has narrowed. Moreover, given the downward trends for membership in major religious organizations in the United States, time is on the universities' side.

New York City, which even a decade ago boasted a strong (and strongly religious) manufacturing working class, has rapidly become a wonkhub of nearly 600,000 post-high school students, according to the last census. The academic expansion in the city has come at the same time that the Catholic Church-once New York's largest private landlord and community presence-has confronted decline. In neighborhoods like Father Rafferty's, the role reversal is startling, with colleges starting to elbow out the church for space and influence. "New York is an intellectual city," said Mitchell Moss, a professor of urban planning at New York University (and an Observer contributor). "People want to study in New York. You have to recognize how much this has really changed."

While the Catholic Church, like other major religious organizations, struggles with declining resources and attendance, universities are scrambling to find room to grow. Father Rafferty, who before Corpus Christi was a New York University chaplain for almost a decade, smiles kindly when he talks about Columbia's reign over the neighborhood. "I understand the need for expansion," he said. "But you also need to think about the community you're expanding into."

He does not blame the university for any decline in church membership. "It's not their direct intention to cause that," Father Rafferty said. "Some of this is driven by society changing, and the failure of churches to evangelize, welcome newcomers, and scandals within the church."

For decades, Corpus Christi has, in fact, enjoyed a symbiotic relationship with its Ivy League neighbor. While a student at Columbia in the 1930s, for instance, Thomas Merton, later to become one of the 20th century's most famous Catholics as an author and lecturer, was baptized there, and young people still approach Father Rafferty asking to be christened after reading Merton's memoir, The Seven Storey Mountain. But starting in the '60s and '70s, partly because of its neighbor's growing population of students and faculty, Corpus Christi watched its membership drop (though it has climbed slightly in the past decade). Apartment buildings once filled with strongly Catholic Irish and Hispanic immigrants have become housing for undergrads and their TAs, who may or may not see the need for Catholic theology or organized religion in general.

The church still controls some of the city's most valuable real estate. Amid the anxious consumerism of Fifth Avenue, St. Patrick's Cathedral rises largely unchanged over the past 150 years. When the church bought this land in 1810, in what was then the countrified city limits, "People thought it was a folly," said Paul Moses, a journalism professor at Brooklyn College, who's reported on the Catholic Church for decades. But the church's understanding of demographics, its insight into the rhythms of birth, marriage and death in New York, was unmatched. The cathedral cost about $4 million to build, and now St. Patrick's, which is also the seat of the archbishop of New York, has more than $191 million in assets, making it one of the 150 biggest landowners on the city's assessment rolls.    

But even as the value of St. Patrick's and other church properties has skyrocketed, many other Catholic parishes are in dire financial straits. "The church is land-rich and cash-poor," said one person familiar with its holdings. "There is no question many of the properties are an economic drain." Many of the buildings should be demolished, the source added, but a lot still enjoy "prime, prime locations."

Though baptized Catholics still make up roughly 40 percent of the New York City population, according to researchers, church attendance is down locally 20 percent over the past decade (a challenge faced by many other mainstream Christian denominations), and the church has also faced diminishing enrollment in parochial schools. The archdiocese of New York, which includes Manhattan, the Bronx and Staten Island as well as several upstate counties, announced in 2007 that it would close two parishes and merge six with others-although a spokesman noted that the situation is ongoing and all are being used as worship sites.

The archdiocese also recently announced that 27 of 185 schools will close this year-the biggest reorganization in its history-including five schools that will close or merge in Manhattan. Since the closing of St. Vincent's in early 2010, no Catholic hospitals are left in any of the five boroughs.
"Within the church," Mr. Moses said, "there's a real effort being made to use real estate as an asset. They're facing such financial difficulties, and [real estate] will help them develop a solid financial base."

The decisions can be heartbreaking, and sometimes deeply divisive. Closing a school or church is "like a death," said Timothy King, a real estate agent at CPEX Realty, who has helped the church manage some of its assets. "The cardinal and bishop give a lot of prayerful consideration to all of these matters," he said, "to have an outcome that's going to assure the long-term benefit for everyone."

On Sunday, The Brooklyn Paper reported that the Brooklyn diocese, which includes Queens as well, called in three squad cars to oversee the last Mass at Our Lady of Montserrat in Bedford-Stuyvesant, which was closed, as scheduled, a day later. Its pastor, the Rev. Jim O'Shea, had vocally opposed the closing, backed by a number of parishioners. "It's a complete shame that instead of making an appearance and thanking the community, Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio sent the police in fear that people would protest because they know the truth behind the closure is political," one worshiper told The Paper.

Meanwhile, Bishop DiMarzio put out a statement saying he was "deeply aware of the sacrifice that these changes mean for those who worship in these churches."
Even after closing parishes or schools, the church usually chooses to hold on to its assets, sometimes leasing them to other institutions such as charter schools. The demographics could still change, and the church has also perhaps learned from the tragic example of St. Vincent's Hospital, a Village institution run by the Sisters of Charity that the church sold off ward by ward until it was forced to close the entire hospital. A plan by the hospital and developer Rudin Management to build condos that would help support St. Vincent's buckled under community opposition.

As the case of St. Vincent's illustrates, finding new uses for the buildings is also not easy: What good is a church as anything other than a church? "Unless at some point we're in need of a leper colony, prison or mental asylum," a source said, the buildings are "functionally obsolete."

The church's decline affects us all. For nearly a century, religious institutions stood between many New Yorkers and desperation. "The church was extremely important in helping in the rebuilding of New York City," said former mayor Ed Koch, who recognized early on in his political career the importance of reaching out to Catholic voters, especially the so-called white ethnic ones in the outer boroughs. "And it remains extremely important in delivering services. The Catholic Church is No. 1 in the delivery of social services, better than what the civil service can do."  

As N.Y.U. and Columbia rise to dominance, will their presence be as benign?

The universities have both embarked on their biggest expansion plans in over 100 years, and their respective neighborhoods' opposition has been closely chronicled. N.Y.U plans to grow its campus by more than 40 percent, adding 3 million-plus square feet in Greenwich Village, an engineering school in Brooklyn and a satellite campus on Governors Island. The main campus of the school-at more than 22,000 undergraduates, the largest private college in the U.S.-is already situated in one of the most densely populated areas of the city.
Stone churches once rose a couple of stories above their neighbors; N.Y.U. plans to build space equaling the Empire State Building in Greenwich Village, which critics say will dwarf its surroundings.

Columbia has also announced a $6.3 billion expansion plan that will add 6.8 million square feet of additional classrooms and other facilities, including the 17-acre West Harlem campus. The new campus will almost certainly drive up property values and make it more difficult for members of the working-class neighborhood to continue living there. Some clergy have raised objections that the plans do not include affordable housing on the site of the campus.

Even as Columbia grows and the church's influence wanes, it is hardly a neatly plotted story of the university triumphing at the expense of the church. It's more like two stories running parallel in the same setting. Columbia even met with local clergy when beginning its expansion efforts nearly a decade ago, but it did not go well: Some clergy stopped attending. "The situation has been compared to David and Goliath," said the Rev. Earl Kooperkamp of St. Mary's Episcopal Church on 126th Street and Amsterdam. "All David had to do was take Goliath off the field. ... How do you get Goliath to sit down, make peace and be a good neighbor?"

New Yorkers will have to make peace with the new Goliaths rising in their midst. Universities and colleges already control more than 22 percent of office space in New York City, according to Cassidy Turley, including 72 million square feet in Manhattan. Columbia's holdings totaled 19.6 million square feet, and N.Y.U. owns 15 million feet, according to the report. "These universities have become powerhouses financially," Mr. Moses, the journalism professor at Brooklyn College, said. "The churches don't seem to command that kind of influence. They're begging foundations to keep their schools alive.

"You are talking about money," he added. "Universities have lots of money and the churches don't."

The question remains: Can universities step in to fill the gap left by a declining church, providing education, hospitals and a sense of community, given the relentless hustle in this city?

"Universities help add to the city's quality of life," Mr. Moss, of N.Y.U., said. "Within the university, you have seminars, theater groups, lectures. They become an important part of the city's fabric."

Much like the role the Catholic Church once filled? "Yes, exactly like that."

But when The Observer floated the same idea to the Rev. Thomas Shelley, a professor of Catholic history at Fordham, he laughed gently. "The main business of the church is religion," he said. "Universities don't do that and aren't expected to do it."  

lkusisto@observer.com

While we were tracking down the juicy details for the story, Columbia shared some eye-popping new renderings of the new Jerome L. Greene Science Center at the school's Manhattanville campus--part of its surge in real estate. The new designs are so astounding, we couldn't hold onto them one minute longer. Well done, Renzo.

Enjoy this latest glimpse of the science center, and be sure to check back later to see who is winning the epic collar-and-gown showdown.

SLIDESHOW: Renzo Piano's Jerome L. Greene Science Center at Columbia. >>

realestate@observer.com

Just a week after the firm unveiled its new designs for the Broad Foundation in LA, Columbia has just announced that the university has selected DS+R to design two new buildings at its new 17-acre Manhattanville campus. Both buildings will be an outpost of the business school, one of which will be named for renowned corporate raider Henry Kravis, who graduated from the school in 1969 and recently donated $100 million toward the project.

Columbia President Lee Bollinger said in a statement that the choice was in fitting with the aims of the university's new, if controversial, campus:

"They have achieved beautiful, important architectural successes that have been thoughtfully integrated into the surrounding urban fabric. This is the essence of what we are trying to create on Columbia's new, open campus--bringing together different areas of teaching and research, and enhancing the connections between the University and surrounding community."

This sounds not unlike something Charles Renfro, one of the firm's partners, told The Observer in a profile this week: "We're often in the business of taking institutions, which historically could draw a line between themselves and the place where they exist, and blurring the edges between public and private."

The firm will have its work cut out for it, as the university's Harlem neighbors are still wary of the new campus following an acrimonious takeover fight that involved eminent domain and a legal challenge that nearly made it to the Supreme Court.

Perhaps Columbia--long a patron of architecture, it should be noted--is hoping to smooth out some of the bumps with some dynamic designs. In addition to DS+R, Renzo Piano and SOM have been at work on the Manhattanville campus from the beginning.

The new building is part of the 30-year project's first phase, which means they will likely be built sometime in the next five to ten years. A timeline for the designs has not yet been set according to a Columbia spokesperson.

Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that only one of the two DS+R-designed buildings would be for the business shool. Both are.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @mc_nyo