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Court Allows N.Y.U.’s Contested Expansion Plan to Go Forward

The state’s highest court on Tuesday upheld a lower court ruling allowing New York University to move forward with its expansion plan, most likely ending a long battle with neighbors, elected officials, preservationists and faculty members.

The contentious plan would add about 1.9 million square feet of space across four buildings, including classrooms, dormitories and offices, to the largely low-slung neighborhood of Greenwich Village. About 900,000 square feet of that would be underground, according to the university.

The legal argument centered on whether several slices of municipal land that would be involved in the construction project were public parks and therefore entitled to certain protections. The state’s Court of Appeals ruled on Tuesday that they were not.

“Although the city permitted and encouraged some use of these three parcels for recreational and parklike purposes, it had no intention of permanently giving up control of the property,” the decision said. “That a portion of the public may have believed that these parcels are permanent parkland does not warrant a contrary result.”

John Beckman, a spokesman for N.Y.U., said in a statement that the university was “pleased and gratified” by the decision and that the project would not only keep the school academically competitive but also create “public open spaces” for the neighborhood.

Assemblywoman Deborah J. Glick, a Democrat whose district includes the area and who was a plaintiff in the case, said the decision “puts the limited open space that we jealously guard and protect totally at risk everywhere in the city.”

Andrew Berman, the executive director of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, said his organization was consulting its lawyers about any other legal recourse that might stop or alter the expansion. “We’re already suffering from an extreme over-concentration of N.Y.U.-related uses,” Mr. Berman said. “Thousands of additional people and millions of additional square feet of construction is eventually going to make the Village feel like a company town.”

Mr. Beckman said the university expected to provide a construction schedule to the public in the coming months.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 24 of the New York edition with the headline: Upholding a Lower Ruling, a Court Allows N.Y.U.’s Contested Expansion Plan to Proceed . Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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