The city’s new “Zoning for Quality and Affordability” plan has sparked a firestorm of protest from the Village and Chelsea to Harlem and beyond.
Basically, this is a proposed zoning text change that would allow developers to build bigger in contextual districts. Specifically, the change would allow construction of buildings 20 to 30 percent larger than currently allowable in these districts. This could mean buildings up to 15 feet higher near the Village waterfront.
Contextual zoning regulates the height, bulk, setback from street and frontage width in new buildings — with the goal of preserving the architectural character of neighborhoods.
There are contextual-zoning districts in the Village and Chelsea, the product of years of hard work by local community groups and, notably, organizations like the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation. The far West Village has two such districts.
Two things are driving the de Blasio administration’s push to rejigger these districts. First, architects complain that they currently can’t use the full “zoning envelope” — the maximum allowable square footage — for new projects due to a combination of today’s preference for higher ceiling heights and the need to include more infrastructure in between floors. So the existing zoning should be “modernized,” the city says.
In addition, the plan would encourage the development of affordable senior housing and care facilities in contextual zones.
However, Community Boards 2 and 4 and local politicians and preservationists have — as with one voice — cried out that this “one size fits all” approach would be a disaster, particularly in low-scale areas like the Village and Chelsea.
Last Thursday, C.B. 2 unanimously approved a resolution urging the city to slow down its rush to approve this new zoning rejiggering.
At the same time, C.B. 2 said, creating senior housing and care facilities is certainly a worthy goal. But City Hall is not providing the community boards with the sufficient — and, in fact, City Charter-mandated — amount of time to fulfill their duty of reviewing and critiquing the proposal, and holding public hearings to inform the community and gather residents’ input.
In fact, C.B. 2 itself hasn’t even been given a presentation by the Department of City Planning yet, or had a chance to have its questions about the plan’s scope answered by the agency.
Furthermore, the board noted, the city’s proposal would undermine efforts currently underway to create new contextual zones in the South Village and along the University Place corridor — areas not within historic districts, and thus lacking protection.
In general, the city’s proposed zoning text change would encourage “teardowns” of older buildings for new development, opponents warn. Of course, this would absolutely be anathema for historic neighborhoods like Greenwich Village.
At the very least, C.B. 2 strongly recommended in its resolution, the city should extend the scoping timeframe for this zoning text change by an additional 60 days “to allow more community participation.”
As Tobi Bergman, C.B. 2 chairperson, told The Villager last week, regarding the zoning proposal, “This is a very, very broad brush over the fine-toothed neighborhoods of our city over all. There certainly are things in this plan that make sense. The problem that offends us is regarding the contextual zoning.”
Bergman is well versed in zoning issues, having formerly chaired the board’s Land Use Committee. What the city should do, he said, is not a text change, but an actual rezoning: In other words, leave the perfectly functioning contextual zones in the Village and Chelsea alone — and create a new zoning specifically for other neighborhoods where this plan would be appropriate.
In short, the one-size-fits-all approach would be a huge mistake by the de Blasio administration, and will be opposed wholeheartedly by those of us who cherish our livable, beautiful, hard-won, contextually zoned neighborhoods.
