Self Storage Owner Takes on Columbia University and Wins – At Least for Now

Columbia University, in New York City, is outgrowing its Morningside Heights campus. It is ready to expand - north into West Harlem. Expanding the school will add more buildings, laboratories, and green areas that are open to the public.

There is just one problem - the university needs land to expand onto. But in New York City, all the neighboring land is already occupied. One of the Harlem landowners, small businessman and self storage owner/operator Nicholas Sprayregen, says he is not about to sell to Columbia.

Sprayregen first heard of the university's plan in 2004, when some Columbia administrators invited him to lunch. "They were going around trying to buy buildings," Sprayregen said. The buildings that Columbia wanted to buy were four of Sprayregen's Tuck-It-Away self-storage facilities. He refused to sell. "Before long, the offer changed," Sprayregen went on. "‘If you don't sell, you'll face condemnation.' I looked on that as offensive, coming from an institution as large and powerful as Columbia."

Instead, Sprayregen offered to swap with the university: they could have the property he owned on one side of Broadway, and he could have the property Columbia owned on the other side. "That went absolutely nowhere with the school," admitted Sprayregen.

Columbia decided that if Sprayregen (and one other holdout) would not sell, the university would take the land anyway, using the doctrine of eminent domain, in which the government can appropriate property for public use.

Sprayregen decided to fight back on behalf of Tuck-It-Away. In January of this year, after five years of trying to resist the university's land grab, he filed a lawsuit. At first he did not think his suit would succeed. He lost his case in the Court of Appeals in November. But on December 3, a panel of the Appellate Division of the State Supreme Court in Manhattan ruled that Columbia's use of eminent domain was unconstitutional. Next the case will go to New York's highest court, the Court of Appeals.

It is thought that the case may eventually end up before the United States Supreme Court. If so, the self-storage industry will be watching.

Holly covers the storage industry and has recently been examining self storage in New York.