N.Y.U. finding little cooperation on co-generation

Martin Kushner, N.Y.U. project director for the co-generation expansion, right, and Michael Thornton, an engineering consultant, explained scenarios for siting the co-generation plant expansion last month.

By Lincoln Anderson

The key project in New York University’s Green Action Plan, or GAP — upgrading its co-generation plant — has some neighbors seeing red, at least those who feel they would be severely impacted by the construction. As a result, N.Y.U. now appears to be moving toward a new configuration for the project that it hopes will be more acceptable to the community.

This new “Option C” was recently shown to The Villager by N.Y.U. representatives. Instead of expanding the power plant under Mercer St., the work would instead be beneath N.Y.U.’s Gould Plaza, with a smaller amount of work on Mercer St.

Upgrading the power plant would not only increase the number of N.Y.U. buildings served with electricity “off the grid,” but also reduce the plant’s own emissions, improving local air quality, meeting the university’s goal under GAP of improving the environment. But neighbors fear it’s their environment that will suffer during two years of construction.

N.Y.U.’s co-generation plant — located under Tisch Hall, between W. Third and Fourth and Mercer and Greene Sts. — is powered by diesel generators. “Co-generation” means the plant produces both electricity and heat by recapturing and using waste heat that would be released into the atmosphere.

The plan calls for cleaner-burning natural gas turbines and increasing the number of N.Y.U. buildings powered by the co-generator from seven to 30. N.Y.U. removing its buildings from the grid is motivated partly by fear of blackouts.

As Alicia Hurley, N.Y.U. associate vice president for government and community affairs, put it, “The important thing is ensuring that critical facilities that require heavy energy load — like research facilities and major computer facilities — are not dependent upon the unreliable national and regional energy grids. It would have severe implications if these critical facilities lost power. Millions of dollars in research and data could be at risk.”

N.Y.U. initially wanted to expand the co-generation plant under the sidewalk and street on Mercer St. between Third and Fourth Sts.

Mercer St. residents are still fuming that, while N.Y.U. got a permit from the city two years ago to dig the underground vault on Mercer St., neighbors only found out in November. But Hurley said it took two years for N.Y.U. to make the necessary “internal decisions” to move ahead with the project.

To neighbors’ dismay, 25 trees would need to be felled under this option. In a perk for the community, N.Y.U. offered to put in a new sitting park with pathways and 30-foot trees after finishing the work. But opposition from residents of the one-square-block, 277-unit co-op at 250 Mercer St. is forcing the university to reconsider.

Last month, Hurley, along with Martin Kushner, project director for the co-generation expansion, and an engineering consultant on the project, led The Villager’s editorial staff on a tour of the co-generation plant and showed classrooms that would be lost if the project isn’t done on Mercer St.

Plaza woes

Doing the project at Gould Plaza has many drawbacks for N.Y.U. Half of the outdoor plaza — N.Y.U.’s main event space — would be used for the construction area for 18 months. A dozen annual events, like the school’s health fair and Grad Alley, would have to be relocated, possibly to area streets, Hurley said. Also, up to 13 of the 25 classrooms for the Stern School of Business under Gould Plaza would be lost to the expanded power plant. Plus, three N.Y.U. academic buildings empty onto the plaza.

Gould Plaza, however, is technically public open space — it was a giveback to the community for N.Y.U.’s construction of its monolithic Bobst Library, which was completed in 1972.

Estimates put the daily number of students who would be displaced from Stern classrooms at 500.

N.Y.U. is strapped for class space, and it’s hard to find space for classrooms off campus, according to Hurley. Including the 25 under Gould Plaza, N.Y.U. has a total of 176 general-purpose classrooms, she said.

“There’s not a lot of usable space in this area for classrooms,” Hurley noted of surrounding Village buildings’ layouts.

The Noho Neighborhood Association is concerned N.Y.U. may try to use the former Tower Video building — which the university is leasing long term with an option to buy — for classrooms. The manufacturing-zoned space doesn’t allow traditional classrooms with bolted-down seats, so a variance or rezoning would be needed.

“They’re afraid of a precedent being set,” Hurley noted of N.N.A.

After the tour of the co-generation plant, Hurley unveiled for the first time an alternative to “Option A,” the purely Mercer St. plan; and “Option B,” the purely Gould St. plan. Showing a diagram with most of the work on Gould, but also some on Mercer St., Hurley and the others dubbed it “Option C.” And, Hurley said, they were now basically taking “Option B” — the project totally done at Gould Plaza — off the table.

In “Option C,” most of the work would still be done below Gould Plaza. But some Con Ed and other utilities would be installed on Mercer St., in a much narrower trench than under “Option A” (the 100 percent Mercer St. plan). Only one row of trees — those closest to N.Y.U.’s Warren Weaver Hall — would be felled, while two rows of existing trees would be preserved.

Also under “Option C,” two traffic lanes on Mercer St. would remain open during the construction. And under “Option C,” the noisiest work on Mercer St. would only last two to three weeks, during which 30 piles would be driven to shore up the earthen walls of an excavated 200-foot-by-37-foot trench. The part of the project on Mercer St. in this option would last nine months, as opposed to a total of two years — with nine to 12 months of excavation — under “Option A.”

With “Option C,” three and a half additional Stern classrooms under Gould Plaza would be saved.

Co-gen horrors

But other nearby residents aren’t keen on having Gould Plaza torn up, either, some charging the co-generation plant has been less than a good neighbor.

“We have been suffering with this co-generation for years,” said Edy Selman, of the Washington Place Block Association. “At night, when no one’s looking, on top of Warren Weaver Hall, they blast off stuff, burn off oil, from the smokestack. It looks like a concentration camp. And in the day, they blast off steam. You walk through it, and it’s like a cloud. The size of what they want to put up — $120 million — is much bigger than what they need,” she said of the co-generation expansion.

Myra Martin, of 250 Mercer St., said she was glad to hear N.Y.U. is proposing an “Option C” — which she said was really neighbors’ idea.

“We suggested that to them,” she said. “They’re calling that ‘Option C’? Great! Wonderful! I hadn’t heard that yet. It means they won’t have to cut down our trees.”

Martin said 250 Mercer St. residents were never wowed by N.Y.U.’s enticement of building a park after they were finished on Mercer St. under “Option A.”

“It’s not a park — it’s a green strip,” she dismissed of N.Y.U.’s offering. “I’d rather have the shade of the big trees. They offered to put in 30-foot-tall trees. The ones we have now are 40 to 60 feet. We love it,” she said of the trees’ shade. “It’s quality of life.”

Martin said she and her neighbors sense victory and feel N.Y.U. will, indeed, put the project at Gould Plaza.

“I think they realize they can’t do anything anyplace,” she said. “This is my town — I live here, too.

“That’s their students and it’s their property and it’s their project,” she said, adding, “Do power plants even belong in residential neighborhoods?”

As for the project’s promised benefits of cleaner air — at least when compared to the emissions from N.Y.U.’s current power plant — Martin, again, was nonplussed.

“It’s never going to be Vermont,” she said of the city’s environment. “We’re going to expose our kids to it. For some reason, we want to live here.”

Classes dismissed

Meanwhile, Zella Jones, head of the Noho Neighborhood Association, said they would “vigorously oppose” student classrooms at the Tower Video location.

“Noho from the east side of Broadway to the Bowery is one of the very few areas left that has any existing zoning restrictions on N.Y.U. expansion,” Jones said. “Mostly, folks are resistant to Noho being N.Y.U.’s next major frontier.”

For her part, Jones thinks the best option for the larger neighborhood is to put the expanded plant on Mercer St.

“I am reasonably convinced that our communities will realize an overall net gain in environmental benefits with the installation of the new co-generation plant,” Jones said. “Further, the traffic impact of construction on one block of Mercer St. seems moderate compared to traffic impact of similar constructions we are now or have experienced in this neighborhood.”

Beyond providing a new park on Mercer St., Jones said she wished N.Y.U. would fix the dilapidated and sunken strips of public space along Mercer St. between W. Third and Houston Sts.

“This seemed a suitable giveback for the whole community…and might set a tone for any number of other improvements, expansions and renovations that N.Y.U. and its neighbors might have to deliberate in the future,” Jones said.

But Hurley said fixing up the subsurface below the strips would be a difficult and lengthy process, because the city, not N.Y.U., owns the property. Hurley said delays have cost the co-generation project $5.6 million and that the university wants to get started.

“At this point, we just want to get to an agreement as to what’s better for the broader community,” Hurley said. N.Y.U. is anxious Community Board 2 might not approve the project — indeed, might not even approve of the very concept of co-generation.

“Our elected officials really need to help us figure this out,” Hurley said.

Both Hurley and Kushner at times expressed some exasperation with the opposition.

“If you ask me, this is a lose,” Hurley said. “You have an ugly space [on Mercer St.] that’s going to go back to an ugly space. This is NIMBY [not in my backyard] at its finest.”

“Twenty trees,” Kushner sighed of Mercer neighbors’ fight for their foliage. “This project will save 7 million trees.”