New York University yesterday presented more details of its expansion plans and an article by Albert Amateau in today's edition of The Villager disclosed that the university presented plans to the Community Task Force it has been meeting with recently that it intends to demolish four 4-story buildings at 131-9 MacDougal Street that contain the historic Provincetown Playhouse and replace it with a slightly larger building.

The disclosure of the plans for the playhouse, which is not an official city landmark, shocked some preservationists and will be presented May 28 before the institutions committee of Community Board 2.

"The plan to demolish one of the most historic sites in all of the Village and all of New York city, in all the history of theater - the former home of Eugene O'Neill and Edna St. Vincent Millay - is totally wrong-headed," Andrew Berman, the executive director of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation told CityRealty.com today.

"There is simply no reason to demolish this wonderful historic building just to replace it with a new and slightly larger building; worse, it goes against the same 'planning principles' NYU agreed to which says the University will 'prioritize re-use before new development.' It also belies their statement of support for the proposed South Village Historic District, which includes the Playhouse," Mr. Berman declared.

Mr. Berman also described the university's proposed addition of a fourth and larger tower to the Silver Towers complex, also known as University Village, designed by I. M. Pei on the north side of Houston Street between La Guardia Place and Wooster Street as "preposterous; it is an affront to the existing design."

He said that the university was still "talking about adding up to 3.6 million square feet of new space in and around their main campus over the next 23 years" that he said would be "the equivalent of all the new NYU buildings built in the area over the last 42 years; this is a frightening and overwhelming amount, and it would seem to indicate a near-doubling in the university's rate of expansion, not a decrease as they have tried to suggest."

One of the plans the university is considering calls for a "zipper loft" building redevelopment of its large but low Coles Gymnasium building along Mercer Street. The proposed mid-rise building would have staggered box-like buildings for academic or residential use with some variation in building height rising over a low rise base on the full block between Mercer and Wooster Streets and Houston and Bleecker Streets.

The university is also considering filling in the large open space between the colorful twin slabs of the Washington Square Village complex. Its presentation noted that it has studied a "grid restoration project, an alternative that could be explored beyond the year 2031, is not an option for the foreseeable future but may make programmatic and financial sense at some more distant point" for the Washington Square Village site, adding that it has "heard" "some people strongly opposed the potential demolition of Washington Square Village," which is probably the city's foremost example of "tower-in-the-park" planning.

The university's "plinth and tower" plan for Washington Square Village would add a one- to two-level plinth between the two Washington Square Village buildings and new underground space and the open space could be "book-ended" by a pavilion building on LaGuardia Place and a tower on Mercer Street. Renderings indicated the tower would be angled on the site and rise considerably higher than the two existing slab buildings. "Open space on the plinth's roof could be publicly accessible from gently sloping ramps off LaGuardia and Mercer," it said.

The glass-clad, "pinwheel tower" proposed for University Village would be taller than the existing three towers but the university's preservation maintained that it would not obstruct their views.