NYC Mayor Threatens to Sue Columbia Over Gated Sidewalk

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s office is threatening to take legal action against Columbia University if it doesn’t “immediately” reopen a campus sidewalk to the public, court documents show.

College Walk runs from Broadway to Amsterdam Avenue and serves as the primary pedestrian thoroughfare for Columbia faculty, students and staff to walk through the Morningside Heights campus. The university bought the sidewalk from the city in 1953, but the agreement gave the city “free and unhampered access” for the “maintenance, repair and relocation, if necessary, of the presently existing City facilities.” For the most part, area residents moved freely across campus until 2024, when the university locked the gates to the walkway amid pro-Palestinian protests on campus. Now, anyone who isn’t affiliated with Columbia must use a QR system to enter the gates. 

In 2025, a group of Morningside Heights residents sued the university and city, arguing that locking the gates violated the terms of the original agreement. In response, then-Mayor Eric Adams filed a motion to dismiss, arguing that College Walk isn’t a city-owned public street or public space and that under the agreement the city only maintains a “limited easement at grade for municipal purposes and services only.”

But Mamdani, who was elected last year, has since reversed the city’s position.

“The City supports reopening of the walkway through the Columbia University Campus to the public,” a city attorney wrote in a Sept. 3 letter to the New York Supreme Court. And this week, the city filed a stipulation with the court, warning that “If College Walk is not immediately opened to the public, the City intends to take prompt legal action to ensure that Columbia reopens the pedestrian walkway consistent with its past practices.”