A rendering of one of the sketchy new vagrant magnets going up in Kips Bay.

Kips Bay, the East Side enclave pocked with post-war towers, has been largely protected from many of the changes that have transformed other sections of Manhattan. Neither particularly posh nor particularly gritty, nor particularly beautiful, the neighborhood is known as a good place to raise a family or fade into senescence.

But now the cloistered area is getting an unwelcome shot of vigor in the form of new micro-unit apartments. The local community board is terrified that the diminutive middle-class housing units will draw undesirable elements, bad seeds, transients.

"No matter what anyone says, we're worried that these are going to be SROs that are run as hotels," Toni Carlina, the community board's district manager, told the Wall Street Journal.

Egad!

The fear is totally unfounded—Ms. Carlina confessed as much when he admitted that they believed the apartments would be SROs "no matter what anyone says." Besides size, the micro-apartments will be no different than other studios; they'll have kitchens, bathrooms and be rented out with yearly leases. But the reaction highlights the kind of terror of the new that is prevalent in many New York neighborhoods. (The great bike share controversy is now engulfing whole corners of the city.)

But what makes the micro-apartment situation so interesting is that they're totally designed for yuppies—the kind of people whom even the biggest fuddy-duddys usually love to welcome to the neighborhood. (Families are debatably more desirable, but then, there are always those who will complain about children.)

With rents that start at $914 a month and will probably go well beyond $2,000 for the market-rate units, the micro-apartments will, it seems safe to say, be rented out exclusively to middle- and upper-middle-class tenants. To live there, residents will need to earn at least $36,560 a year  to meet the rule of thumb for New York apartments that a renter's salary should be 40 times the monthly rent.

Indeed, the relatively high costs of the apartments (40 percent of which will be "affordable" and set aside for tenants earning no more than $77,190 a year) has caused some fretting that the wee apartments won't really be affordable at all. Affordable units will go up to $1,873 a month, less than the average Manhattan studio price of $2,000 but hardly a bargain, especially considering that while brand new, they're only 250 to 370 square feet.

Nonetheless, SROs aren't the only thing that locals are worried about. They also fear loitering. And vagrants! According to the Journal: "The community board is also concerned about an eating-and-drinking establishment being allowed in the building, since she said the public plaza that it will be facing has had a problem with vagrancy in the past, and residents worry that if there is a bar or restaurant open late into the night, vagrancy will once again be an issue."

But who isn't terrified of yuppie vagrants? Always sitting out at sidewalk cafes sipping $12 glasses of prosecco, hauling around bags of groceries from Whole Foods, pausing in public plazas to check their iPads.

Waterfront wonder. (Bing Maps)

The future design for this corner of the park. (BBP)

How would you like to wake up to views of the Manhattan Bridge and Lower Manhattan beyond, a lavish waterfront park right outside? That is the vision Brooklyn Bridge Park is hoping will entice developers into the newest private development within the libertarian park. Today, the park released a request for proposals for a development at the nexus of John and Pearl streets in Dumbo. The project calls for no more than 130 residential units in a 101,000-square foot development that can rise no higher than 13 stories.

“The addition of the residential development at the John Street site represents a critical element of our park maintenance plan,” Regina Myer, president of Brooklyn Bridge Park, said in a statement. “This development will not only benefit the DUMBO community, it will further activate the northern end of the park.”

Located at the most northern edge of the park, on the far side of the Manhattan Bridge, this section is so far untrafficked because the open space has yet to be built out, though it does have funding for construction to begin, tentatively next year. In addition to the apartments, the project will have space for ground-floor retail.

Among the requirements for the development outlined in the RFP are a strong architectural identity for the project, a design that is complimentary to the park, achieve LEED certification for sustainablity and, above all, "generate a financially feasible and economically viable project, with lease payments that will contribute to ongoing maintenance and operations of the Park."

Some locals have criticized the park for being funded by development on public land, but supporters, including the Bloomberg administration, argue that without these developments there would be no park. (This problem is not limited to Brooklyn Bridge Park, as those on the Hudson can attest.) But by reserving parcels for private development, it inherently means a smaller park (in this case, 85 acres), as well as a whiff of commercialism in what should be the public realm.

But at least the project will not be quite as big as previously proposed, at 17 stories and 140,000 square feet. Last year, State Senator Dan Squadron and Assemblywoman Joan Millman negotiated a reduction in the development's size as part of a deal with the Bloomberg administration over trying to reduce the amount of apartments in the park. This is not, however, one of the developments that could be totally eliminated by a special tax placed on Jehovah's Witnesses property.

It will be curious to see what developers turn up for this project, given the intense interest from some of the city's biggest names in the previous commercial development in the park, a development of a hotel and apartments at Pier 1. McMansion and Northside Piers builders Toll Brothers and hotel financier Starwood Capital won that project.

The John Street development is smaller and more out of the way, but considering that Dumbo has become in only a decade the borough's most expensive neighborhood, it would seem the competition for any development opportunity will be fierce.

Correction:An earlier version of this post said the project would include park amenities within the building, such as toilets and space for park workers. This is not currently in the plans. The Observer regrets the error.

Here we thought 40 Bond Street was one of the greatest building of the past generation. (Maybe that's not saying much, since this is New York.) But this riotous video from Curbed shows that opinions are far less uniform than the lofty windows on the Herzog & de Meuron-designed, Ian Schrager-built condo project in Noho. The highlight is clearly the angry neighbor who calls the place "a piece of shit" and "Frank Lloyd Wrong."

The more things change... (Bowery Boys)

Opinions have been mixed on NYU's plans to expand its campus in Greenwich Village. Construction unions and some local businesses like it because it means more work and more customers. Neighbors and some local businesses do not like it because it means more crowds and shadows and a loss of that Bohemian character. The mayor likes it, Scott Stringer likes the compromise he came up with, NYU antagonist Andrew Berman likes none of it.

What may (or may not, depending on one's level of cynicism) surprise is that a good many NYU faculty do not like the expansion plan, either. According to a survey conducted by the NYU Faculty Senators Council (PDF), a representative body for professors and instructors, nearly two-thirds of faculty oppose the plan, compared to one-quarter that supports it. A full 40 percent percent of the faculty surveyed said they strongly oppose the plan.

The survey, which was conducted earlier this month, was distributed to nearly 4,000 faculty members, about 30 percent of whom responded. It is possible that this could have skewed the results due to selection bias—only those with strong opinions would respond. Underscoring this is the fact that 40 percent of respondents lived on the NYU superblocks directly affected by the plan, Washington Square Village and Silver Towers, while only 36 percent live outside the Village.

Regardless of bias in the survey, hundreds, if not thousands, of faculty members oppose the university's expansion plan.

Even more damning, a good many of them believe that the plan will not achieve its primary goal. When asked to agree or disagree with the statement "NYU 2031 will meet the needs of NYU’s faculty and students & its research and academic programs,"  56 percent said it would not, with 27.5 percent strongly disagreeing with that position; 31 percent believed the expansion would improve the institution. Furthermore, 59 percent said they did not believe NYU would successfully carry out its expansion plan, compared to 30 percent who did.

Faculty also echoed complaints of community members that they were not sufficiently informed on NYU's expansion plan. They expressed concerns about the plan's impact on faculty recruitment and retention, tuition increases and the university's fiscal future.

Nearly 70 percent of faculty members said they would be in favor of revisions to the plan, with the strongest support falling on what has become known as the Kimmelman plan, proposed by The Times' architecture critics, to eliminate the two boomerang buildings between Washington Square Village. (Forget not where more than a quarter of survey respondents live.)

That won 72 percent of support from those surveyed, followed by calls to move construction outside the superblocks altogether and calls not to include a hotel. Respondents were ambivalent on construction of a new tower on the Morton Williams site. That is somewhat ironic, considering that one of the few concessions won by Borough President Scott Stringer was that he got NYU to cut the size of the Morton Williams building in half.

NYU claims to be listening, though it also seems unlikely that it will actually change its plans to accommodate the concerns of faculty. "From the start, NYU’s plan for expanding its academic facilities has been a response to requests from faculty, programs, deans and schools for more and better space for research and teaching," spokesman John Beckman said in an email. "It seeks a balance between building nearby and building in remote locations, and a balance between building in the neighborhood and building on our own property where our faculty live."

He said the university would "reflect on the survey as we continue to go through the ULURP process." When The Observerasked how the plan might actually be change, Mr. Beckman demurred, but he did say that "There has been extensive consultation with multiple groups  of faculty over many months."

mchaban@observer.com

NYU's John Sexton and the Beep. Whose side is he on? (NYU)

The vote of Borough President Scott Stringer has become the hottest commodity since, well, the Park Slope Food Co-op's Israel vote last night. Everyone is leaning on the Beep to give the project a full-throated yes or no, from construction unions to community groups. No sooner did a group of 44 Village organizations send a letter to Mr. Stringer's office opposing the plan than the Post has come out with an editorial urging him to support it.

The Post calls the vote "a no-brainer" before it goes on to presume Mr. Stringer's stance, which he has yet to reveal to The Observer's knowledge (and repeated inquiry):

Any would-be mayor should embrace such dividends with unqualified enthusiasm.

Alas, not Stringer. He’s sidled up to the predictably short-sighted, knee-jerk anti-development opposition from neighbors of NYU’s Greenwich Village campus.

This follows on the heels of similar editorials in Crain's and the Daily News, where the editorial board described Mr. Stringer's desire to "thread the needle" as "disturbing" development. If anything, quashing thoughtful compromise is what is disturbing.

Following yesterday's letter, an NYU spokesman pointed out that the Greenwich Village Chamber of Commerce is among the groups supporting the plan. Part of what makes NYU's expansion so complex is that in an already very busy and crowded neighborhood, there can never be a unanimity of opinions. The Observer received a letter today from a group of 24 local businesses opposing the plan (see below). A complex plan breeds a  complex response.

That is why Mayor Ed Koch's recent op-ed for the plan is so intriguing. He opens with an anecdote about having lunch in the Village as he often does.

Every time I do that and see NYU students of every imaginable racial and religious group walking and talking together, I say to whomever I’m with, “These students make the Village what it is. They keep us at the center of thought; they keep us young, and keep the Village an interesting place in which to live. They keep New York competitive with the rest of the U.S.—and, indeed, the world.”

How lucky for the Village. But will more buildings—and not necessarily more students, as the plan calls for an expansion of space but not attendance—really improve the qualities Mayor Koch so enjoys when he is having lunch? What if his outdoor cafe were cast in shadow?

What if, more importantly, NYU shared the wealth, as many critics are begging it to do—among them the community board, the Municipal Art Society, and even Times architecture critic Michael Kimmelan—and limited, but did not eliminate, its expansion on these blocks and instead focused more of its efforts in place like Downtown Brooklyn.

The fact NYU and its backers seem to continually ignore is that no one is saying it should not expand, people are only questioning the need to expand on these two blocks, and to do it with facilities like a hotel, a gym and possibly more housing.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

Letter to Stringer from Small Businesses

A colossal campus. (NYU)

The chorus of opposition to NYU's expansion plan grows louder. (It's not just the dogs and the neighbors anymore.) Forty-four different community leaders, politicians, preservationists and neighborhood groups have written a letter to Borough President Scott Stringer urging him to vote down the university's ambitious, outsized project to build four new towers a few blocks south of Washington Square Park.

"We believe that the zoning changes, lifting of urban renewal deed restriction and taking of public open space requested by NYU is wrong in principle, and the developments which would follow from it would have a terribly detrimental impact," the letter reads. "We believe that there are better alternatives to be consider by the University and the city."

Borough President Stringer has until April 12 to vote for or against the project. The project—which will add as much as 2 million square feet to the neighborhood on two already dense superblocks—has been vociferously opposed by locals while the construction industry and educational community, as well as the mayor, have openly supported it.

The borough president's vote will be especially important given next year's mayoral election. A vote for wins favor from the real estate industry and the educational community, a vote against enhances his credentials as a booster for community planning and neighborhood issues. And with his chief rival Christine Quinn weighing in in a few months, Mr. Stringer is presented with an opportunity to differentiate himself from the pro-development City Council speaker.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

NYU Community Letter to Scott Stringer

NIMP! Not in my playground. (NYC Parks Advocates)

As The Observer recently chronicled, the East Side of Manhattan is so starved for parkland, locals will do just about anything to hold onto every blade of grass and monkey bar. At Ruppert Playground, neighbors have been fighting the powerful Related Companies, which is preparing to replace the open space with a new apartment tower possibly reaching 40 stories.

The developer has every right to do so, as it built the playground three decades ago and only had to keep it open through 2008. This has not kept those on the block and their elected officials from fighting the plan, but now Related seems to have found its secret weapon: photon rays!

No, the developer will not be wielding lasers in its NIMBY battle. Instead, it plans to build a state-of-the-art cancer in the base of the building, according to The Journal, an addition that appears to have won over some reluctant pols:

The group seeking to build the proton facility, New York Proton Center, is a nonprofit corporation backed by a consortium of local hospitals including Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and the NYU Langone Medical Center, as well as 21st Century Oncology Inc., a private firm. The group has been searching for a location in Manhattan for well over a year, and last year won preliminary approval from the state Department of Health to build on a site on West 57th Street. Those plans appear to have been shelved, as the group began looking for a new site months ago.

The therapy, which targets cancerous tumors more directly than other forms of radiation therapy, has been growing around the country in recent years. While a treatment center has yet to be built in New York City, a facility is planned for Jersey City, N.J., while another is being built in Somerset, N.J.

Ruffling Ruppert's feathers. (NYC Parks Advocates)

Related is also considering a way to incorporate at least some open space into its plan, which may assuage the neighbor's concerns. There is the possibility, though, that adding medical facilities could add to the tower's size, since it might qualify for a community benefits bonus under the zoning code, making this a double deal for Related: a tenant that pleases some opponents while making for a taller, and therefore more valuable, tower.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC