A Manhattan judge has denied an effort by a group of Upper West Side residents who are opposing the American Museum of Natural History’s $383 million expansion project, which will take up a portion of the neighboring greenspace in Theodore Roosevelt Park.

In October, Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Lynn Kotler had temporarily halted the construction of the Gilder Center for Science, Education and Innovation, which when finished would add about 190,000 square feet to the museum and encroach about a quarter of an acre of the roughly 17.5-acre park.