Columbia's Expansion Leads to A Loss of Community Jobs

Columbia University’s proposed expansion would bulldoze 18 acres of land in West Harlem, eradicating many small minority-owned businesses, and eliminating thousands of well-paying, skilled-labor and manufacturing jobs that currently employ many workers from the surrounding neighborhoods. In attempting to justify the taking of so much from the West Harlem community, Columbia has hyped the notion that expanding its campus will create employment opportunities for the surrounding community. This turns out to be a myth. Here are the facts:

Columbia's Plan: Short-Term Construction Jobs

There are issues here about whether these will go to community residents and about the proportion of minority and female workers and contractors. Moreover, construction jobs, while important, are temporary and not of any long term benefit for the community.

Columbia's Plan: Biotech Jobs for Outsiders

Columbia has stated that at least one third of the area in its proposed expansion will be devoted to biotechnology. While biotechnology is a major money maker for the University, neither the community or the City benefits since Columbia is a tax exempt institution. And it does pose potentially hazardous conditions for the surrounding densely populated community. In terms of jobs, biotechnology is not a labor intensive activity and does not yield the kind of jobs the community needs. In Columbia prior biotech facility, the Audubon Research Building, 1627 jobs in commercial and university labs were promised. Columbia has refused to provide the actual figures. CPC has good reason to believe they are nowhere near the promised levels and that they have gone primarily to non-community residents with a high proportion of foreign nationals. Columbia and non-Columbia Jobs.

Columbia's Plan: Low-Wage Service Jobs

Columbia has a poor history of fulfilling promises of jobs and job training for community members, and like all developers exaggerates the job production its expansions will create. Different figures to different audiences have been given for its expansion plans in West Harlem. In a letter to Community Board 9 of March 28, 2005 the figure of 9,200 net new jobs over the next thirty years was given. Of these the University estimates that 9% would be non-Columbia jobs-about 820 mostly minimum wage, service sector jobs over the next thirty years, hardly worth giving up the jobs now available to the community in this manufacturing zoned area. The most telling statistic given by the University is that of all current jobs, less than two thousand Community Board 9 residents are employed and only 213 of these (just over 10%) live in Grant Houses or above 125th Street. There is no reason to expect any different pattern for future expansions. That would amount to some 920 community jobs created over the next thirty years-DEFINITELY A NET LOSS FOR THE COMMUNITY.

Further reading:

Driven Out By Columbia? Columbia Spectator. April 24, 2006.

Consequences of eminent domain in other New York City communities:

Eminent Domain & African Americans. By Mindy Thompson Fullilove. 

Owners Ousted From Times Site Awaiting Payout. The New York Sun. January 9, 2006.

"the displaced tenants and owners said their experience over the last three and a half years serves as a warning to those who may be ousted by condemnation in the Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn, the planned expansion of Columbia University in Harlem, or other projects ... A locksmith who was displaced after 21 years in the same location, Taghi "Teddy" Pazooki, said that after his forced move to a less-lucrative storefront and the divorce that followed, he now spends his nights sleeping on the floor of his shop." read the whole article

Condemning (For) Private Businesses. Gotham Gazette. March 4, 2002.

Seeking To Write A New Script For Eminent Domain Battles. City Limits. May 14, 2007

Eminent domain race ripples. March 2, 2007

Eminent Domain Revisited. Gotham Gazette. December 12, 2005