We've already seen the power of dramatic videos to win over the city in its quest for a tech campus. It's not the only reason Cornell won, but these sure don't hurt the cause. Now, N.Y.U. is out with its own video, admittedly quirky (the campus is in Brooklyn after all). Would you send your nerd here?

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

Created by some of the greatest landscape architects of their day, these spaces are, to put it mildly, challenging. Like the modernist architects redefining what buildings should look like in the middle of the last century, so too did these landscape architects, favoring viny slopes and more concrete than vegetation in places. At the corner of Houston Street and LaGuardia Place, Alan Sonfist's Time Landscape, which to most New Yorkers may look like an overgrown thatch, is actually a celebrated space taught in design and art schools around the world.

These "parks" need, if not improving, at least updating. That is a big part of N.Y.U.'s pitch to the community as it works to rezone the area, one of the most vicious Village NIMBY fights since Robert Moses built these superblocks half a century ago.

Still, does that mean N.Y.U. can bend the truth when talking about the project?

Last month, the University announced that its plan would create a whole swath of new, wonderful open space in this quiet corner of the campus and the Village, an exciting new amenity rivaling Washington Square Park. A celebratory press release declared “N.Y.U. will present its plans to add a net new 3.1 acres of publicly accessible open space to Greenwich Village, an increase that will improve the area’s open space ratio.”

This suggests a major net gain of open space for the neighborhood, one about one-third as big as Washington Square Park. Crunch the numbers, that is not actually the case. It is one thing to knock down a building or transform a parking lot into a park. It is another to take one park and turn it into another park.

After all, the superblocks already boast a good deal of open space, onto which N.Y.U. is planning to build new buildings. Just because the open space that is there now is not perfect does not mean it does not exist. But in the university's opinion, because this land is generally uninviting and inconvenient, this means the new open space is essentially the only open space. Greenwich Village, you are welcome.

"We are making publicly accessible [existing] open space that is not—and is not perceived—as publicly accessible now," university spokesman John Beckman told The Observer.

Still, this ignores the fact that this is already N.Y.U. owned land, and many of the impediments in place that the university cites, such as fences and locked gates and requisite visitor passes, could merely be done away with by the institution. The public space would not be the best, but it still underscores the fact that there is not nearly a net open space gain on the scale the university is suggesting.

N.Y.U. critic-in-chief Andrew Berman, director of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, said in an email that he remains suspicious of the school’s promises for its open space.

Basically what they are doing is saying that virtually none of what you and I would call ‘open space’ on the superblocks now is ‘public open space’ for a variety of reasons, but they are claiming that virtually all of the tiny amount of open space that would be left after they are done building their four huge new buildings would be considered ‘public open space’ even though nearly all of it would be owned by N.Y.U., and the tiny piece of it that would be given to the parks department N.Y.U. would maintain an easement over, so they could build under it, dig through it, park construction equipment on top of it, and close it to the public for years at a time at will (which they admit they would do).

To the university's credit, it is creating some amount of new open space, and it is no doubt better.

One of the common assumptions about this land deal is that because N.Y.U. is building new towers on its open space, this will mean a reduction in open space. This actually turns out not to be the case, though, as the university’s architects astutely point out. The footprint of the crescent-shaped academic buildings planned for the Washington Square Village superblocks measure 28,000 square feet, which would occupy a good deal of the 1.5-acre open space located between the two apartment slabs. But it turns out that driveways and parking lots and a small retail building on LaGuardia Place actually occupy more land than the proposed towers.

"If one adds up the surface parking areas, the Green and Wooster Street driveways, the mail services driveway, it adds up to 35,700 square feet," Mr. Beckman said. "In other words, nearly 8,000 square feet more."

Holly Leicht, executive director of New Yorkers for Parks, agrees with the university that the quality of the space presently available is considerably worse than what is on offer, and therefore the numbers bandied about by the university do not necessarily matter. “There will be legitimately more, better public open space than what is currently there,” she said in an interview. “It will be more inviting, more obvious, with no need for membership passes or other impediments.”

Ms. Leicht did share some of Mr. Berman’s concerns, though, specifically what regulations and guarantees will be in place to ensure the open space remains publicly accessible, since it is privately owned land—not quite Zucotti Park, but not far from it, either. “What kind of controls will be in place, what are the specific regulations to ensure reasonable public access,” she said. “That is something we will be looking at very closely as the public review continues.”

Mr. Beckman ensured that a restrictive declaration, the technical term for thee rules governing such spaces, would be implemented, but those details are still to be worked out as the university's rezoning makes its way through the public review process. "The answer is 'yes,' there will be a restrictive declaration that will govern, among other things, the open space," Mr. Beckman said.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

As if that were not enough, the school has just released designs for a new dentistry school at 433 First Avenue, the latest addition to its healthcare campus on the Middle East Side.

Located at the corner of 26th Street, the new building is designed by KPF and EYP Architecture & Engineering. With 170,000 square feet of space, the new facilities will expand the university's current dental school facilities, add a new bioengineering program that will work across a number of departments, as well as housing the nursing school, which is relocating from the core campus in Greenwich Village.

This move is meant to alleviate pressure on the already space-constrained university where it often finds itself at odds with neighbors. Last year, N.Y.U. began demolishing a grand red-brick five-story building on the site, which dated to 1897, facing no apparent opposition on that front. Funny how big a difference the right neighbors make.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

Washington Square Park is about to get sweeter. Häagen-Dazs will occupy 1,824 square feet, split between the ground floor and the lower level, on 55 East Eighth Street. The building, along a retail strip between University Place and Broadway, already has a Chipotle and a Cosi inside.

The ice cream chain will open during the summer, and faces competition from the nearby Coldstone Brewery on Broadway, as well as from Ben & Jerry's on Third Avenue.

Beth Rosen and Ross Berkowitz of Robert K. Futterman & Associates, with Jennifer Watson and Phil Baugh of Baum Realty, represented the tenant. Bruce Spiegel and William Bergman of Rose Associates represented the landlord, Uniway Partners.

rli@observer.com

How these disparate demands related to one another is anybody’s guess. The protestors lack of seriousness was demonstrated by their unwillingness to negotiate with university administrators and the profound lack of support from the thousands of N.Y.U. students whose lives were disrupted by this handful of delinquents. As Charlie Eisenhood wrote on the NYU Local blog, “Despite the affectation of seriousness, the whole occupation ultimately felt like a joke.”  

Bereft of any idea of what activism really is, the protestors quickly violated their own pledge of nonviolence—a security guard was injured and had to be taken to the hospital—and not to damage property: Behaving like a bunch of frat boys on a panty raid, they broke a lock to gain access to the Kimmel Center balcony. 

N.Y.U. administrators demonstrated sagacious leadership, showing patience and dissolving the disruption without having to call in the NYPD. Now might be a good time for the protestors to reflect on how their behavior made a mockery of their mission statement: “In our quest to construct an ideal university, we seek a university founded upon mutual respect, democracy and accountability, and we espouse methods consistent with that quest.” Unfortunately, accountability goes both ways. Eighteen students who chose to remain past the university’s 1 a.m. Friday deadline to leave the building have been suspended. One N.Y.U. senior involved in the protest, asked by a reporter about the suspension, said, “I’m worried in terms of the fact that I want to go to law school and I want to graduate.”

“There is no better time to celebrate our digital media sector, and these events will serve to better connect the various digital companies and online participants that make up the City’s thriving Internet industry,” the mayor said in a press release.

The event starts with a June 3 breakfast on 43rd Street, moves to Google headquarters, gets political at a June 4 event at N.Y.U. Law School and ends with the Webby Awards.

Maybe this will help Rafael Martinez Alequin finally get his press pass.

The Greenwich Village-based university recently purchased 58 units at the soon-to-open Riverwalk Landing condominium on Roosevelt Island as part of a new faculty housing program. Under the Riverwalk Landing Purchase Program, the school will resell the units to N.Y.U. faculty at below-market value. And it only gets better for the professors. Not only will the condos be offered at a discount, but the university will give secondary financing for up to 30 percent of a unit's purchase price.

The condos will range in price from $346,000 for a 500-square-foot studio to $1.3 million for a 1,500-square-foot three-bedroom, according to the university.

There is one hitch, though. Only permanent faculty living in university housing are eligible. Sadly, post-doctoral fellows, acting professors and faculty fellows are not.

Because of the high likelihood that faculty members will be interested in the same unit, the university held a lottery last night for interested parties. (Brings back memories of sophomore year, doesn't it?) The lottery was open to faculty who had submitted an Intent to Purchase form by last Monday. With the lottery complete, units are now available on a first-come, first-serve basis.

Riverwalk Landing, which will be located at 425 Main Street on Roosevelt Island, is scheduled to be complete by July 2007.

New York University announced on Thursday the team that it will be using to draw up a master plan for the university’s use of space over the next 25 years, which will, it sounds like, entail some expansion.

“It’s about faculty space and classroom space,” said Kelly Franklin, an N.Y.U. spokeswoman. “In the near term, we will be looking at where opportunities are in our existing space for the better use of space."

The team will be led by SMWM, which has done planning studies for Harvard and Brown; and include Grimshaw, Toshiko Mori Architect and Olin Partnership.