Baldwin & Co. mull Village’s outlook
BY GABE HERMAN
A panel discussion at Judson Memorial
Church on June 20 explored
issues facing Greenwich
Village — prominently, gentrifi cation
— and ideas for improving the area.
Called “Whither the Village?” the
event was moderated by actor Alec
Baldwin, and included panelists Reverend
Donna Schaper, Judson’s senior
minister; Allyson Green, dean of New
York University’s Tisch School of the
Arts; and Andrew Berman, executive
director of Village Preservation.
Baldwin shared his history with
the Village, which goes back decades.
He came to the city in 1979 to attend
N.Y.U.’s Tisch School.
“It was a different New York,” he
refl ected. “The soul of New York has
migrated over to Brooklyn.”
But he said the Village has always felt
different to him, though years ago the
retail scene was different.
“Retail seemed subdued, quaint,
dare I say, indigenous,” he said.
While N.Y.U. is seen as a local colossus,
Baldwin said the school must grow
to compete, and there’s no going back.
He noted that change is inevitable, a
common theme of the panel.
“There’s more tall buildings in the
Village than I can recall,” he said.
Baldwin said there is more of a community
feeling Downtown than where
he formerly lived on Central Park West
on the Upper West Side.
“We need bold things,” he said, of
helping the Village. Regarding all the
closed retail storefronts, he suggested,
if retail won’t come back, why not turn
buildings into affordable housing?
When Schaper was asked what she
missed most about the pre-gentrifi ed
Village, she said, “the low rents.”
“The Village can’t be what it used to
be anymore,” she said, adding that the
neighborhood can’t be expensive yet
still edgy and avant-garde. But she felt
it was a false choice to paint things as
merely being between poor and artistic,
or rich and not.
“The Village did change primarily by
the extraordinary success of N.Y.U.,”
Schaper stated. But although the school
caused gentrifi cation and forced out
the bohemians, she said it also benefi ts
the Village by adding a global diversity.
“We are much less white because of
N.Y.U.,” she said.
Schaper wondered if the university
could be corralled into something edgy
and experimental, tossing out ideas
such as making the school greener,
opening N.Y.U. facilities, like the gym,
to non-N.Y.U.-affi liated persons on
some days, and a self-tax on the school
to go toward something like affordable
housing in the neighborhood.
Schaper said she would like to see all
of University Place closed off to cars, to
connect Union Square and Washington
PHOTO BY TEQUILA MINSKY
Reverend Donna Schaper speaking
at the event.
Square Park.
“Wouldn’t that be fun and different?”
she said.
The Department of Transportation
is currently proposing to make
just one block of University Place a
“shared street,” with a 5-mile-per-hour
speed limit for cars, despite Community
Board 2 wanting the whole street
closed to cars.
Green of N.Y.U. said she has been a
Villager since 1986, and her sister was
minister at Judson from 1996 to ’98.
She said she missed all the bookstores
the Village once had. She added
that she felt Tisch was a part of the Village,
not something working against it.
She mentioned she was part of a committee
on the N.Y.U. 2031 expansion
plan that cared deeply about the megaproject’s
impact on the Village. She
noted she was not speaking for N.Y.U.
as a whole.
“We are the Village, too,” she asserted
of Tisch, adding the school has students
Andrew Berman, left, and Alec Baldwin on the panel.
from around the world and every
state in the country. “The culture of the
Village is baked into our DNA.”
Despite complaints of the university’s
impact on the community, she said
that without N.Y.U., it was “more likely
the Village would’ve been an enclave
of high-rise condos.”
Green said closing University Place
to cars would improve the area’s quality
of life and cut car pollution.
Berman said the federal government
wasn’t as invested in affordable housing
as it used to be, and that older, historic
neighborhoods like the Village had become
more desirable recently, both of
which have impacted the Village.
He said that while N.Y.U., The Cooper
Union and the New School were
great assets locally, they present challenges
in their ongoing need to expand.
Regarding University Place, Berman
said having more pedestrian-friendly
areas is a good thing, but worried the
street would be privatized for use by
local businesses, which has happened
elsewhere, such as Herald Square, he
noted. And he wondered where the car
traffi c would go.
“So much of this is about disinvestment
in the public good,” Berman said
of the government’s role in helping areas
like the Village. He said he grew up
in affordable housing, which gave him
and others a solid start in life, but that
opportunities like that are rarer now.
The room was about three-quarters
full for the event. During audience
questions, one woman, wondering
what to do about Silicon Alley creeping
below 14 St., said that Councilmember
Carlina Rivera had not protected the
area from possible expansion.
PHOTO BY TEQUILA MINSKY
The preservationist said it was worth
considering that a pedestrianized “connector”
between Union Square and
Washington Square might only help
further spur that kind of tech expansion.
Baldwin wrapped up by saying he
would love to have this kind of talk
again about more issues, especially
ahead of the 2020 presidential election,
which Schaper agreed with.
Afterward, Robert Reiss, a thirdgeneration
Villager who comes to Judson
occasionally, though he is not a
member, said he was disappointed with
the discussion and felt it was too soft
on N.Y.U.
“This is not Village preservation,” he
said, calling the University Place idea
a “suburban mall” and a “hacky” idea.
He said he had had high hopes for the
event, but found it “anodyne in content
and tenor.”
Speaking afterward, Berman said, “I
thought it was a useful discussion on
a topic that needs and deserves much
more time than any one panel discussion
can provide.”
He said he hoped for more talks
about N.Y.U.’s role and impact on the
Village, including how to mitigate its
expansion and to plan more thoughtfully
regarding the surrounding area.
“But I think conversations like this
are an important venue for thinking
about what we want to change about
the Village and what we want to preserve,
as well as identifying those things
we can change and those we may just
need to accept,” Berman stated. “Given
Judson’s longtime role in the Village, I
think it’s the perfect venue for such a
conversation, and I hope to be part of
more.”
6 June 27 - July 10, 2019 DEX Schneps Media