The Sunday Times “Metropolitan” section asked readers to send in photos of the City’s waterfront – and in today’s edition there are a series of interesting pics (does anyone say “snap shots” anymore?). People at the shore’s edge (or in – or about to be in – the water) appear in nearly all of the shots. This contrasts mightily with last week’s Times piece on the polluted Newtown Creek – and it raises (of course) interesting zoning and land use issues: (more…)
photo courtesy of streetsblog.org
Of course, we all know that the Big Apple is bigger than LA. We are presently at just about 8.4 million, the highest population ever seen in the City’s history! We also all know that we are more diverse and more dense than any other place in the nation. The City’s Planning Department (a.k.a. New York’s Smartest) has a great wealth of population statistics http://www.nyc.gov/html/dcp/html/census/popdiv.shtml on the 5 boroughs.
We at ZONE are fascinated by several key facts: (more…)
image via brownstoner.com
Streetsblog reported last week that the Department of City Planning is re-analyzing its minimum parking requirements in certain neighborhoods with good transit access, such as Downtown Brooklyn, Harlem and western Queens. Currently, the Zoning Resolution requires that parking be provided for almost all new developments throughout all areas of NYC, with the exception of Manhattan below 110th Street and in a limited area in Queens. (more…)
Last week, the New York City Council’s land use committee unanimously approved CPC Resource’s application for the New Domino development. As we discussed back in January (when the project was certified), the approval will permit the development of 2,200 units on the Brooklyn waterfront, along with community facility, office and retail space. The project also includes 660 units of affordable housing, over 4 acres of publicly accessible open space, including a waterfront esplanade and a 1-acre lawn, and the preservation of the landmark Refinery building. (more…)
This week, the New York Supreme Court decided in favor of the City in an “adult use” zoning case (For the People Theatres of NY Inc. v City of New York), drawing yet another chapter to a close in the ongoing saga of adult establishments vs. the City of New York. As a result of this decision, which places substantial additional limits on the location of adult uses, a number of adult book and video stores that have been operating as “60/40″ establishments – businesses where only 40% or less of the floor area is occupied by adult uses — will likely have to close or move elsewhere. The case, which dates to 2002 (and was remanded from the Court of Appeals), was in response to a 2001 amendment to the Zoning Resolution expanding the definition of “adult establishment.” However, the controversy over the regulation of adult establishments in the Zoning Resolution dates back to at least 1995, when the ZR was originally amended to classify adult establishments as different from other commercial uses. (more…)
Last week, the monitor overseeing the settlement rejected the county’s affordable-housing plan, saying it was deficient on details, accountability and enforcement. Instead of specifying what the county would do to meet certain desegregation bench marks, Westchester merely restated the bench marks. The plan didn’t specify where and how the money would be spent. It had no “concrete time frame” for finding and buying properties to develop and was “unnecessarily vague on the whole.” (more…)
Recently, residents of the co-op at 233 East 69th Street, where eight households would have their east-facing windows completely blocked by a proposed ventilation structure, filed litigation against the MTA and FTA. The suit claims that the MTA’s 2004 Final Environmental Impact Statement promised that the ventilation structures “would typically be approximately the same size as a typical row house—25 feet wide, 75 feet deep, and four- to five-stories high, although some may be wider,” and that they “could be designed to appear like a neighborhood row house in height, scale, materials and colors.” The Suit claims that now the MTA is planning on building structures as tall as 10 stories with facades made from a “utilitarian mix of translucent white glass, steel louvers and ceramic tile.” (more…)
The City’s industrial zoning districts are increasingly being lost. So-called “M-zones” (M1, M2 and M3 zoning districts) – where everything from Glue to Auto Manufacturing are permitted – have been modified or eliminated in such diverse places as Chelsea, Williamsburg-Greenpoint, the southwest Bronx, Long Island City and DUMBO. Over the past 10 years or so, new “mixed use districts” have emerged in waterfront sections of Brooklyn and the Bronx – and inland areas such as Hudson Square, Bed-Stuy, Gowanus and Long Island City. (These join the already established mixed-use zones in DUMBO and Hunt’s Point.) Now – and here’s the real news – M-zoned areas of Hudson Square are under consideration for rezoning. (more…)
With the recent completion of the Carroll Gardens rezoning, City Planning achieved its 100th rezoning since 2002, the year that Mayor Bloomberg entered office and appointed Amanda Burden the Chair of the City Planning Commission. City Planning is now celebrating this accomplishment on its website, which lays out the 100 rezonings on a timeline and an interactive map – they’re both very interesting and really demonstrate the extent to which the city’s zoning map has been changed over a relatively short period of time.
Check it out here: Neighborhoods Count – Celebrating 100 Rezonings
A coalition of well-known civic and community organizations have filed a lawsuit in NYS Supreme Court challenging the adequacy of City Planning’s environmental review process for the recently-adopted rezoning of Sunset Park, Brooklyn. The Sunset Park rezoning contextually downzoned portions of the Brooklyn neighborhood, but also included an upzoning along the avenues. (more…)
