Natural History Museum Files Gilder Center Expansion Plan With Slight Changes

UPPER WEST SIDE, NY — The Natural History Museum is moving forward with its $325 million Gilder Center expansion plan. On Thursday, the museum filed an application with the Landmarks Preservation Committee, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The plans filed with the LPC on Thursday have revealed slight changes to the museum's expansion. The most notable change is a scaled-back expansion into neighboring Theodore Roosevelt Park, according to the Journal. Since the museum announced the Gilder Center expansion in 2014, neighborhood green space activists have rallied against the museum's plan to build on parkland.

The plans filed with the LPC called for a one-quarter of an acre expansion into the park instead of the original one-half acre plan. The reduced expansion will also save two trees that were in danger of being uprooted, reported the Journal.

Sig Gissler, founder of the Defenders of Teddy Roosevelt Park, told the Journal that his group is pleased the new plan will save two trees and take up less parkland. But he maintained that the group is still concerned with the expansion's size.

While the museum is reducing expansion into the park, the overall expansion actually increased in size. The amended plan calls for a 235,000-square-foot expansion. In 2014, the museum said the project would only add 218,000 square feet of existing and new space, according to a 2014 press release.

The museum will hold a public information session to discuss the landmarks application on Sept. 13, according to its website. The plan will also be discussed at a Sept. 20 joint meeting of Community Board 7's preservation and parks committees. That meeting will also be open to the public.

Community Board 7 will vote on the landmarks application on Oct. 5 and the Landmarks Preservation Committee will vote on the application on Oct. 11.

Photo: Patch