it began the process of demolishing the Audubon Ballroom to replace it with a medical research facility. Although many city officials, including Mayor David Dinkins, were strongly in favor of the project because of the jobs and economic impetus it would bring to the area, which had suffered greatly in the economic downturn of the 1970s, community activists and Columbia University students – who occupied Hamilton Hall on campus – protested the planned demolition, and historic preservation groups unsuccessfully sued to prevent it. They were also unable to persuade the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission to hold a hearing on giving the building landmark status. Eventually a compromise was reached, at least in part due to pressure brought by Manhattan Borough President Ruth Messinger and Malcolm X's widow, Betty Shabazz, who both favored adaptive reuse of the building. They were supported by a report on its structural integrity produced by a pro bono team of architects assembled by the New York Landmarks Conservancy and the Municipal Art Society. The compromise allowed Columbia to build on the northern part of the building their research facility – now the Audubon Business and Technology Center in the Mary Woodard Lasker Biomedical Research Building, part of the Audubon Biomedical Science and Technology Park a public-private partnership between Columbia University Medical Center and the New York state and city governments. In return, 2/3rds of the Audubon Ballroom's original facade – the part along Broadway and West 165th Street – would be preserved and restored. In addition, a portion of the interior ballroom where Malcolm X was killed was restored and protected, to be made into a museum honoring him. In 2005, the Malcolm X and Dr. Betty Shabazz Memorial and Educational Center opened in the lobby to commemorate the contributions Malcolm X made to the civil rights movement. Architecture Architect Thomas Lamb, who later would design the nearby eclectic United Palace, was an advocate of the use of ornamentation and color on his building's exteriors. He would write: "Exotic ornaments, colors and scenes are particularly effective in creating an atmosphere in which the mind is free to frolic and becomes receptive to entertainment." In line with this philosophy, the facade of the Audubon Ballroom presents terra-cotta glazed polychromy, encrustations and cornices. Its ornamentations include brown foxes between the windows on the second floor, intended to flatter Fox, and, most prominently, a colorful protruding three-dimensional