Published: November 5, 2009

On Oct. 28, Fordham learned that the Board of Managers of the Alfred Condominium, located on W. 61st Street, has filed a lawsuit against Fordham College at Lincoln Center (FCLC) in an effort to stop the Master Plan from moving forward. Residents and members of the Board of Managers of the Alfred were vocal protesters of the plan earlier in the year during its approval process. Since the matter is presently in litigation, Fordham has declined to comment.

“The owners and the residents of the Alfred and our neighbors fully support the expansion of Fordham University’s academic campus,” said Sidney Goldfischer, president of the Board of Managers of the Alfred.

“However, we remain dedicated to preserving the character of Lincoln Center and its principal components, the Performing Arts Center and Collegiate Campus. We believe that the new academic buildings, which should be built, must nevertheless conform to the long-standing zoning and land use regulations that have served to protect this community.”

“We maintain that sixty-story luxury condominiums have no place on a campus that was obtained by eminent domain and dedicated to the construction of educational facilities. In that action more than 1,000 working class families were forced from their homes.

“We also believe that the enormous size of the project poses insurmountable environmental threats to the safety and health of this community. As years of negotiations have failed to achieve this goal we have been forced to appeal to the courts,” said Goldfischer.

According to Elliot Meisel, the lawyer representing the Alfred, for years the Board of Managers’ objective has been to speak with Fordham and have them moderate the intensity of the development to be “more consistent with the vision of the entire neighborhood.”

Meisel said that his clients do not want to interfere with the “legitimate expansion” of the FCLC campus, they just are opposed to the fact that Fordham is selling some of the land they own, and then “seeking to build excessively on the remaining land because they don’t have enough.”

According to Meisel, the petitioners believe that if Fordham did not sell any of the land, it could then build the proposed amount of space in a configuration that would be compatible with the intended vision of the neighborhood.

“They only need 2.1 million square feet, Meisel said, “the rest is just to receive a financial windfall.”

The affidavit filed by Goldfischer states that “The Master Plan as Modified would permit an additional 2.23 million square feet of new construction to be built on the Land, only 1,528,332 square feet of which would be for academic and dormitory facilities, while 701,073 on the northwest and southwest corners of the Land would be sold to private developers for what was reported to be a sales price of $300,000,000.00 for construction of luxury towers thereon.”

The document later references the 1958 transfer of land to Fordham for approximately 2.25 million dollars, a price “less than half the land’s unencumbered value,” and the fact that “slums were cleared,” and Fordham’s obligation to develop the land for public use, namely academic purposes.

“If Fordham is allowed to sell the land… to private developers now,” the affidavit states, “substantial portions of the land will not have been put to the intended public use and will instead be put to a purely private use, to profit Fordham.”

As litigation proceeds, the Observer will continue to follow the story and report on any developments in the case between the Alfred Condominium and Fordham University.