The University’s plans for changes at Baker Field are one step closer to reality. And as the project works its way through the city’s approval process, a group of Inwood residents are pushing to have their voices heard.
The plans for the proposed five-story Campbell Sports Center are now before the Department of City Planning for consideration in the coming months.
The University’s plan recently passed through Community Board 12, which had a month to review it and make public comments. But disagreement within the board last month led to a tie vote, leaving CB12 without a resolution.
Still, neighborhood activists say this isn’t the end of the road.
“We were as a rule frustrated that no recommendation evolved,” said David Brodherson, a member of the Inwood Mobilization Committee—a group formed in response to Columbia’s construction plans for Baker. “I believe the University has a broad-based obligation to the neighborhood in which they’re operating.”
Now, the committee is currently drafting its own recommendations to submit to City Planning.
“They range from questions about lighting to issues of security along Broadway to bus parking,” Brodherson said, adding that the group is not anti-Columbia, they just want to ensure that the process benefits the neighborhood.
At stake in City Planning is whether Columbia will be allowed to bypass a city waterfront zoning law. The Baker Athletics Complex is located on the north shore of Manhattan, and current law states that to do any construction on a waterfront property, the owner must devote 15 percent of that land for public access.
But Columbia has said there is just not enough space because too much of the site was built before that law was passed. Instead, they’ve proposed providing only a tenth of that, or about 1.5 percent of the land, for new park space.
Susan Russell, chief of staff for City Council member Robert Jackson, said that their office is working with the Inwood Mobilization Committee to ensure that City Planning hears from local residents even without comments from CB12.
“We’re working with them to understand their points of view. We’ll listen to them. We’ll be educated by them,” she said.
Brodherson said he’s not sure when the recommendations will be ready, and the clock is ticking. “Missing a deadline in this kind of thing can be a very serious disaster in this city,” he said.
Still, there’s a lot of uncertainty around the project timeline, with officials at the University offering few details.
Columbia Facilities had no comment about the current status of the city’s approval process, and Athletic Director M. Dianne Murphy repeatedly declined to comment on a potential timeline for the project’s completion. City Planning did not respond to requests for comment.
The website for the Campbell Sports Center project says that the goal is to have the center completed by 2012, with construction expected to start this past summer. That hasn’t happened yet and can’t until the University has those approvals in hand from City Planning and the City Council.
“The delay in breaking ground is not a result of fundraising—when approvals are in place, we will break ground for the Campbell Sports Center,” Deputy Director of Development for Athletics Corey Aronstam said in an email.
In an October interview, University President Lee Bollinger said that the additions to Baker Field are a definitive priority.
“We just have to get the money, and we have to get the approvals. It should be completed in the next couple years,” he said.
The Baker project, including the Campbell Sports Center and the waterfront development, will cost $50 million, officials say, and $30 million has already been raised.
The Campbell Sports Center is what Aronstam called the lynchpin of the $100 million athletics fundraising campaign the University started in October 2007, which includes other initiatives like endowing coaches positions and facilities updates like renovated locker rooms.
Numbers provided by the athletics department show that annual fundraising has almost doubled from fiscal year 2005 to fiscal year 2010, from $1 million to $1.9 million.
But those numbers have been fairly consistent since fiscal year 2008, when annual giving jumped to $1.8 million, and 2010 saw only a six percent increase over the previous year.
“It continues to be our expectation that we will fully fund the Campbell Sports Center through gifts to the project,” Aronstam said.
The Campbell Sports Center has also benefited from two recent $1 million alumni donations, on top of a $10 million donation from the chair of the University’s board of trustees William Campbell in 2007.
Senior Executive Vice President Robert Kasdin said in October that athletics fundraising is going extremely well.
“But we’ll always take donations,” he said.
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