[Manhattanville photo from Joe Schumacher]

Checking out of Fairway one night years ago during my first week in New York, I watched the slimeball Yuppie ahead of me in line slip the girl who bagged his groceries a ten spot. He then gave his chin a quick cocky upturn as he told her to have a good night. It just didn't register. Fairway was in such a dirty, desolate area; it didn't make sense that someone would have that much disposable cash.

I now understand that the slimeball was probably on his way home to Westchester. The only thing I knew of the area at the time was what I saw on the walk down from my Riverside Drive sublet: old parted out Volvos and Mercedes under the Henry Hudson Parkway, dark empty streets, random pools of oil, and the overpowering stench of bum urine at the base of the Riverside Drive viaduct on St. Clair Place. The place was a dump.

So it strikes me as odd that people are all up in arms about Columbia expanding into Manhattanville. The area has been better in recent years, with Dinosaur, the Hudson River Cafe, and Floridita's tapas bar providing a little night life, but it is largely still an underutilized brownfield. It is not zoned residential, and Columbia already owns most of it. Plus, the Columbia expansion will be such a job creation machine, which I think few people will argue Harlem does not need.

There is the idea of displacing people in the surrounding neighborhoods. People argue that as Columbia improves the general area, rents will go up. But here too the response has been baffling. As best as I can tell from watching this unfold, it goes something like this:

Professional anti-gentrification protesters who have been 'fighting Columbia gentrification' for decades see the expansion as their time to shine. I mean, there is actually something going on now. The professional anti-gen protesters argue that the area should be kept as it is to preserve the community. Hell, they argue that maybe we should even bring back manufacturing in the process (I am not making this up). They don't want to see big new glassy buildings built, especially luxury housing, so the protesters help create what is called a 197a plan with the local Community Board. The plan outlines what the area should look like, and it does not include all kinds of new fancy stuff.

Columbia has their plan, called the 197c. Surprisingly, this plan includes their campus expansion.

The professional anti-gen protesters end up rallying around Tuck-It-Away Storage owner Nick Sprayregen, as he is the most vocal property owner in the expansion zone not to sell to Columbia. The protesters end up carrying Sprayregen's No Eminent Domain banner in their push to keep the status quo. But, it turns out that the storage owner doesn't just want to keep his storage business, he wants to build housing too. And it just might be market rate luxury housing. Sprayregen both floats an idea in the Daily News for swapping property with Columbia so that he can build a high-rise and submits his own 197c plan. Despite Nick's 197c plan including the creation of market rate housing, some of the professional anti-gen protesters support it, which makes one wonder who is paying them.

Meanwhile, real estate investors are buying property in the area. (Foreshadowing!) They are doing this all over Manhattan, but we are only concerned with the Manhattanville area.

Then the Borough President comes along. He sees that Columbia wants to expand their campus, and he sees that anti-gen protesters want the area to stay the same. So he offers his special zoning plan, which would allow Columbia to create their campus expansion in Manhattanvile and at the same time keep surrounding areas as they are- without big new buildings. It sounds like a win for everyone! Except, we have the real estate investors from the previous paragraph.

To sum up best how the real estate investors see this playing out, let's go to one of the all-time best quotes ever published in Curbed. This is from an investor in the Columbia area, feeling a bit of zoning stress:

Fuck it, I say. Manhattan is one big joke. I think they should let highrises go up anywhere at this point. What's the point of communities on the island anymore?

Everyone's so priced out, does it matter anymore?

If you want a neighborhood/community, move to Brooklyn.

Let Manhattan be just one big bullshit skyscraper. Tower of Motherfuckin' Babel. But for douchebags.

And the Lord spoke and said, "Let us make sure these douchebags do not understand each other, less they build a Tower of Douchieness. Let one douchebag not understand the other." And thus the languages of Goldman, Lehman, and Morgan were formed and the Lord saw it and it was good.

What does this mean? Well, real estate investors probably bought the property they did at a premium with the idea that they could create higher density housing to justify the price. If the area is zoned in such a way that they are prevented from building high density housing, then a couple of things might happen: (1) the real estate investors will want to kick out everyone currently living there so that they can up the rent in the places they do have, or (2) the rents and prices will increase due to demand, as who does not love a low-rise community, and they are becoming so rare in Manhattan.

Additional reading:
West Harlem Rezone to Appease Columbia Foes? [Curbed]
Rezoning May Ease Columbia Expansion [Sun]