NYU will on Tuesday release to community leaders and elected officials a proposal to build a new spiritual, academic and Catholic center at the corner of Thompson Street and Washington Square South.
The Greenwich Village university closed on the now-empty lot intended for the new building, at 58-60 Washington Square South, on May 26, buying the land from the Archdiocese of New York for $25 million, according to city records. The address is the former site of the NYU Catholic Center, which the Archdiocese demolished, according to John Beckman, a spokesman for the university.
The new “Center for Academic and Spiritual Life,” will, says the proposal, “be dedicated to the mission of a diverse set of spiritual life space and critical academic programming needs. The proposed design of larger flexible working spaces allows the building to be used for a multitude of university needs such as classrooms, music practice and rehearsal rooms, conference spaces and others. The first floor will be a new Catholic Center at New York University, owned and operated by the Archdiocese of New York.”
The proposed 61,373-square-feet edifice would rise six stories (plus rooftop mechanicals), next to the Kimmel Center, the building NYU student radicals took over in February, to the rapt attention of the international media (and The New York Observer). NYU has commissioned designs from Machado and Silvetti Associates LLC, the firm that built the Bowdoin College Museum of Art and the Sam M. Walton College of Business at the University of Arkansas, among other academic buildings.
Plans call for the new LEED Silver center to actually connect on most floors to the neighboring Kimmel Center, and also to the cogeneration plant. Work should begin this fall and be completed in summer 2012, once the university gets a variance from the Board of Standards and Appeals to build a shorter, squatter building than it could as-of-right. The center is a part of NYU Plans 2031, the university’s (and mammoth landlord’s) plan to build or acquire an additional 6 million square feet of space by, you guessed it, 2031.
We’re not sure if this clause is included in all Archdiocese building transactions, but the deed forbids the university from using the land “for the purpose of performing any abortions or as a family-planning clinic.”
See the slideshow above for more renderings. The proposal can be accessed here.
drubinstein@observer.com
