Northattan

Is Columbia University still in the running, in the hot, higher-education competition to build a $100 million engineering school in New York City?

Columbia University's Manhattanville development. Photo by Richard Drew/AP Photo.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg isn’t saying, though he did indicate on Wednesday that the city has eliminated a few of the seven proposals it’s been considering since late October.  Which ones? The mayor and his aides wouldn’t list them.

Columbia’s bid, which goes up against rival proposals from Stanford, Cornell and other prestigious institutions from around the country  (and India), is the only one that would build the city’s new high-tech graduate school in Northattan — on the university’s Manhattanville property where an expanded campus is already under construction.

The mayor’s plan for a high-tech “applied sciences” school  aims to attract more engineering talent to a city whose academic community has conspicuously lacked it, and Columbia hopes to gain a hometown advantage. In a recent interview with the Chronicle of Higher Education, the university’s president, Lee Bollinger, referred to bids from institutions outside of the city as “branch campuses.”

“It would be a pity if there were an undue fascination with the new and the novel,” he told the magazine.

But this latest proposal for Columbia’s Manhattanville property comes at a time of increasing neighborhood outcry over the school’s Harlem expansions.

Local residents have been asking more and more if Columbia has been as good a New York neighbor as Bollinger claims. Of particular concern is the West Harlem Local Development Corporation, the nonprofit organization tasked with distributing about half of the $150 million that Columbia pledged to give West Harlem for community needs as part of its negotiations for the Manhattanville expansion.

Formed in 2006, with its Community Benefits Agreement with Columbia finalized in 2009, the WHLDC was intended to help ensure that $20 million of the Columbia money is allotted for an affordable housing fund, another $20 million for in-kind benefits, and $30 million for construction of an elementary and middle school in West Harlem.

But five years later, the West Harlem Local Development Corporation has no mission statement or website. It holds no public meetings, has no headquarters, and does not even have a public phone number.

While the WHLDC has received $3.55 million of Columbia’s money, the organization has not revealed how any of this money has been spent. Others have reported on some of the spending: the NYC Department of Youth and Community Development says it got  $300,000 to hire Harlem children for summer jobs, while DNAInfo reported the WHLDC has spent $400,000 in consultants and $300,000 in programming.

The lack of transparency has prompted criticism and calls for reform from an array of politicians. State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman issued  a subpoena in November for the organization’s records, and Democratic Rep. Charles Rangel of Harlem has publicly supported calls for an audit.

“The organization is weak,” said Vincent Morgan, a Harlem-based Democrat who has announced his candidacy for Rangel’s congressional seat. Morgan has made headlines recently for his outspoken criticism of the WHLDC. “The area is over 40 percent Hispanic, Dominican Americans, and there aren’t any Dominicans on the board! From a community standpoint, there are no lawyers, no bankers, nobody to know what to ask out of a contract,” Morgan said. (While the WHLDC has not officially made public any information on its board members, their names have leaked on the Internet, and consist of mostly local politicians and community representatives.)

Steps at the front of the Low Memorial Library, at Columbia University. Photo by AP Photo.

The many complaints about the development corporation’s lack of action has sent a question resonating throughout the community: has Columbia turned a blind eye to Harlem?

Thomas G. Lunke, director of planning at the Harlem Community Development Corp., said it’s not the first time Columbia has appeared to ignore community needs. Some years ago, said Lunke, Columbia agreed with community leaders that it would do a survey of northern Manhattan businesses and notify them of contracting jobs needed at the university. “Columbia has millions of dollars in contracts that they let every year, so businesses in northern Manhattan can fulfill those contracts,” said Lunke. “They said they would get back to us, but they never did.”

Still, with Columbia’s Manhattanville expansion in its early stages, and the results of the mayor’s engineering school contest still under deliberation, Curtis L. Archer, president of the Harlem Community Development Corp., said he wants to remain optimistic.

“You have to realize this is a process. Hopefully there will be somebody with strength and vision to chart a vision that will be inclusive of the community,” he said.

It’s unclear whether the current controversy over the West Harlem Local Development Corporation will have any impact on Mayor Bloomberg’s choice of which school gets to build the new engineering facility. Although a special advisory panel, the City Council and others will help vet the proposals, the mayor’s office has made clear that the final choice -– expected by January -– will be Bloomberg’s. Richard Hornsby, Columbia’s communications and public affairs director, declined to comment on the competition because the judging process is still under way.

Columbia’s proposed Institute for Data Sciences and Engineering was a last-minute entry, and it is up against strong bids from New York University, Cornell and Stanford. Unlike those schools, which hope to build on city-owned property on Roosevelt Island, Columbia’s proposal utilizes only university-owned land in Manhattanville.

Despite its roots in the city, Columbia’s proposal is considered a long shot.

“I think it’s safe to say that the city wouldn’t be doing this in the first place if there was a perception that Columbia and NYU were doing a fantastic job in applied sciences,” said Goldie Blumenstyk, writer for the Chronicle of Higher Education.  “If they can organize themselves to get greater activity out of Columbia, and get some of these other places to contribute to the New York economy — Stanford, Cornell — why not?”

UPDATE (Dec. 7, 2011): Mayor Bloomberg’s shortlist of candidates has been narrowed down to four applicants, The New York Daily News reports. Amity University and a group including New York Genome Center and Mount Sinai School of Medicine have reportedly been eliminated from the shortlist, leaving Columbia in competition with Cornell, Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, and New York University. The Columbia Spectator notes that the final result should be announced in January.

Weston United's mission statement painted on one of Gallery M's walls. Photo by Linda Abi Assi/Northattan.

Raju Ratti used to be one of the 36,000 people who are homeless in New York City. He was also among the more than half of them who are mentally ill.

But a year ago, he was admitted to Weston United, a nonprofit organization that provides housing to people who are homeless and mentally ill. He started out in supportive housing with 24-hour coverage, but he now has a job, acting as a peer leader, and he has moved on to more independent living.

In Weston United’s newsletter of April 2010, he wrote: “I am not alone. I used to think I was. This was because I am guilty of prejudice.”

Weston United provides both transitional and permanent housing programs, as well as residential services, job training and mental health services and houses about 150 people. It’s one of many providers all over New York City, but according to its CEO, Jean Newburg, it’s the only organization in Harlem that is grassroots. “We are from Harlem and by Harlem,” she says.

Since its founding in 1985 by members of St. Phillip’s Episcopal Church and Harlem Hospital, Weston United has expanded to several buildings and programs scattered all over Northern Manhattan and the Bronx. A clubhouse, Club United, was recently put in place at West 125^th street and St. Nicholas Avenue. Members, in addition to gaining social skills, receive help in securing government benefits, housing, case management and educational advancement, along with medical and psychiatric care.

Newburg says the clubhouse concept is an international model, originally started by Fountain House, a nonprofit based in New York that also targets the mentally ill. Weston United’s programs have long been following the clubhouse example- its first clubhouse, Casita Unida, is in Spanish Harlem. But the state of New York is now embracing a new model, called P.R.O.S (Personalized Recovery Oriented Services). Newburg says it is a more “educational and person-centered model” with different levels of intensity as patients’ needs change. “We’ll also have a clinical treatment component by next summer, so every member of the P.R.O.S., which we have renamed PROsper Academy, can have access to services from a psychiatrist and nurse,” she says.

Mahamadou Savane's collages are currently displayed at Gallery M, where some members of Weston United volunteer. Photos by Linda Abi Assi/Northattan.

Weston United is celebrating is 25^th anniversary this year, but despite recent changes, its future is uncertain. “We had rollbacks of state contracts, our Medicaid rate was reduced, then there was another cut on top of that. We’ve had to tighten our belts,” says Newburg. One program that “has been under-siege from every side” is Gallery M, Weston United’s art gallery on 135^th street.

Last week, its latest exhibit displayed paintings and collages by Willie Torbert, an African-American contemporary artist, and Mahamadou Savane, a Senegalese artist who currently lives in the Bronx.

Newburg says that for many years, Weston United had a contract with the NYC Department of Mental Health, which allowed the gallery to employ 12 members of Weston United on a part-time basis at Gallery M and its Visionary bookstore. “The city of New York canceled our contract in June,” she says, “and members who were receiving minimum wage for their employment are now volunteering their time.” Gallery M was also asked to sign a costly lease after a new owner took control of the building.

Newburg says Weston United is currently looking for a sponsorship for the program, by mobilizing what she likes to call the “Harlem Cultural Connection.”  When it opened in 1986, Gallery M was the only small community arts gallery in the neighborhood. Now that it’s in danger of closing its doors, Newburg hopes the community will in turn chip in to help save it.