Upper Manhattan residents turned out Saturday to ask Columbia University to honor a court's ruling last week and to not buy the entire Manhattanville neighborhood.

Last week, an appellate court ruled 3-2 that the Empire State Development Corporation, a state agency, acted unconstitutionally after approving Columbia University's purchased buildings in the section of West Harlem and allowed them to fall into disrepair, so the school could say it was revitalizing a blighted neighborhood for the benefit of the public.

On Saturday, a group of residents and community leaders gathered outside the Floridita Restaurant on Broadway and walked to the house of Columbia University President Lee Bollinger to celebrate the court's ruling and to ask the university not to appeal the decision.

Two of 35 Manhattanville business owners fought Columbia's claim of eminent domain, after the university purchased 17 acres of land in Upper Manhattan since 2001 for a new $6 billion campus.

"It is a tool that we use that has a checkered, negative history, as is exemplified by what we are experiencing now with Columbia," said State Senator Bill Perkins.

Residents said they welcome a Columbia expansion, as long as it is built around them.

ESDC officials say they plan to appeal the court's decision, but residents are still hoping that will change.

"This is a march of celebration but it also a march of demand, and it's saying to Columbia, 'Do not appeal.' Because frankly, Columbia is the prime mover here," said resident Ruth Eisenberg. "They keep saying, 'We have nothing to do with it,' but they have funded this entire practice."

"The Empire State Development Corporation and Columbia are formidable opponents but we've been in Albany before the Court of Appeals before so we'll look forward to that oral argument, we'll submit our briefs, and I would imagine that the time frame would be a few months, and then we'll have the court of appeals hopefully affirming the appellate division by saying no eminent domain," said the residents' lawyer, Norman Siegel.

The ESDC could not be reached for comment on Saturday, but Columbia University officials said in a statement they support the ESDC's decision to appeal.

University officials said they have reached mutually beneficial agreements with dozens of other commercial property owners in the area and hope to reach such agreements with the last two.