Tribeca and the Mayor's Zoning Proposal - urgent as always

Urgent Side Note to Tribecans:  Save the date for this coming Monday, November 9th 6:00 p.m. Our Community Board Planning Committee meets to vote on the misconceived zoning proposal at 6:00 p.m., 1 Centre Street (municipal building) 22nd floor.  Come out to express your opposition. Bring Pitchfork. Community Boards across the city have been voting this down, and for good reason.  Why?  See below

Parisians in the 19th century taking to the streets to defend their city.

The Mayor’s Proposal, Zoning for Quality and Affordability is

“A Giveaway to Developers and an Assault on New York’s Unique and Diverse Neighborhoods”

– Peg Breen, Landmarks Conservancy

This is the first of two short essays for Tribecans and other fans of the human-scale city about the city’s recent proposal, “Zoning for Quality and Affordability (ZQA).”  This essay describes the Mayor’s proposal and explains why Tribeca Trust objects to it(and why people across the city should object to it).  The next and second essay  will presents an alternative for Tribeca: zoning reform that would benefit our neighborhood instead of destroy it.

Corrections of fact are welcome.

Read this background first:

What is the “Zoning for Quality and Affordability (ZQA)” proposal?

1. The Mayor and the City Planning Commission propose to “up-zone” the entire city.  That means raises height limits and building envelopes (FAR) everywhere, except for blocks that already have R8b zoning (which means the R8b exception does not apply to Tribeca).

2. The idea is to squeeze more people into NY by giving developers the right to put bigger buildings on any given lot. The city will do this in several ways, the main ones being these:
   1. increase allowed buildable height from 5 to 40 feet, depending on how a lot is already zoned
   2. increase the floor-area-ratio (FAR), which is equivalent to a building’s volume, an average of 20% across the city
   3. allow developers to build into rear yards if the building includes affordable or senior housing (for the story on the creepy way the city is trying to sell this as a senior housing improvement, see our post here.)
   4. eliminate a current rule that requires parking lots as part of new developments in the outer boroughs and Manhattan north of 96^th (this is thought to be one good element of the proposal)
   5. abandon “contextual” zoning, which requires new buildings to match the height and cornice line of existing buildings in neighborhoods that have the “contextual” designation on the official city zoning map. 

3. Extensive changes like this require the approval of the City Council. The short public review process for this proposal (aka, “ULURP”) is already underway.  The end game is a City Council vote. Community board opinion does not matter, although the law requires hearings to be held. That means citizens get to complain, but decision-makers do not care what they think.  The only meaningful recourse is to make votes for politicians contingent on following citizen outrage on the matter. But how do we communicate that opinion to the politicians?

4. The City Planning Commission introduced the proposal last spring and it is now going to community boards this fall for non-binding review.

5. The proposal was modified twice since its announcement. After some initial criticism by dozens of civic groups last spring, City Planning changed the proposal to exclude certain already tall residentially zoned R8B lots, mostly on the Upper East Side.

6. The second modification happened just a few weeks ago, when City Planning Commission added “Mandatory Inclusionary Zoning” to the proposal. This is a rule that tries to force developers to put some unspecified percentage (20-30%) of affordable housing units into any new building, if it falls under the new rules.

For more, read here or here.

Who is pushing the idea?

• According to a Landmarks Conservancy document, the idea for this up-zoning originated in a convivial discussion among developers and our City Planning Commission. Talk about back-room, smoke-filled deals!  No community groups were part of the process. The developers had in their pockets a wish list of regulations that annoyed them. The Mayor bought in to their idea, but added the inclusionary zoning idea as a way to get something out of the developers in exchange for all the substantial giveaways.

How is the idea being sold to the public?

• It is sold as a way to get more “affordable” housing by “incentivizing” developer to do it as part of their normal business operations, specifically to increase senior housing for those who do not wish to grow old in their own homes.
• Targeting the senior market is seen by some as a Trojan Horse to pretty up the proposal, since architects dispute that the zoning changes are even necessary to facilitate the construction of assisted-living complexes.

Community Board’s aren’t buying it, neither are tenant rights groups, neither are preservation groups: 

• 53 civic groups signed a letter objecting to it. Read it here.

• Community boards that have already had it up for for a vote are rejecting it. CB #2 (village/soho) in Manhattan voted it down.  CB #2 (Cobble hill, Fort Greene) in Brooklyn voted down the ZQA but said okay to mandatory inclusionary zoning.  CB #6 on the Upper West Side voted it all down.    CB 15 in Sheepshead Bay voted it all down. Community boards 11 and 12 in Queens voted it down. The Queens Borough Board voted to send the entire thing back to the drawing board. Community Boards 4, 11, and 12 in the Bronx voted it down.  I don’t have a fully tally, but it does not look good for the Mayor’s bad proposal.  Brooklyn CB#3 voted no, as did CB 15 in Brooklyn.

• Other signs:  the tenant rights group, Movement for Justice in El Barrio rejected the proposal yesterday and offered their own alternative. See here.

What are the criticisms of the proposal?

There are at least 20  serious objections!  Here is a list I have collected.

The objections are listed below.  The bolded ones are the objections that particularly upset this writer, but all seem valid.

1. There has not been sufficient time for public review, especially given the moving target elements of the proposal. These are not minor technical adjustments to the zoning code, but major policy changes that will have serious consequences on neighborhoods everywhere and every single community needs its own study to visualize the impact over time.
2. We will get new buildings that are inconsistent in scale with each other and the built fabric of our neighborhood.
3. The proposal is creating a clear economic incentive to harm historic districts.  Howby setting up a new FAR free-for-all.  Of course, the LPC can regulate new demands for rooftop additions to use up the new FAR, but we all see how much good LPC regulation has been under a Mayor hostile to historic districts.
4. Many neighborhoods already have community planning processes underway that are totally different in character from the Mayor’s proposal. Are those plans to be tossed in the trash? The answer, it seems, is yes.  So much for a progressive Mayor.
5. Many communities cannot afford to hire expensive consultants to analyze the impact the proposal would have on their neighborhood.
6. There is no guarantee that any of the housing actually built is going to be permanently affordable even if it does get built, or that it will even be built for seniors.
7. The plan encourages the discredited plaza bonus system in which height is given in exchange for short-lived or low-quality public “amenities.” Such a system does “violence to the cityscape,” in the words of Joe Rose no less, former Chair of City Planning.
8. The proposal “sets landmarks and historic districts on a collision course with developers” as the LPC would be forced to review and accept all sorts of new construction inside historic districts as developers decide that their FAR is “an entitlement” even inside historic districts, not a technical limit that the city provides.
9. The plan allows developers to game the system via the Bureau of Standards and Appeals, a regulatory agency which is dominated by developer interests.
10. Floor area ratio, or FAR, was developed as an indirect tool to manage how many humans can be squeezed into a block. If you can control the building’s envelope and the minimum size of apartments, then you affect loosely how many people can go in, that is, the overall density. FAR was conceived as a maximum limit measure, not as an entitlement of the property owner. But the proposal treats FAR as an entitlement, not a maximum limit, as originally intended. Is this even legal? It is a seizure of the public domain.
11. ZQA exempts buildings from the weak restrictions that now exist against “sliver” buildings of less than 45 feet wide. This creates an incentive in Tribeca to tear down old buildings and build towers, something which is already happening. Why make a current bad situation worse?
12. The proposal removes the distinction between wide streets (which currently have more buildable area) and narrow streets (which currently have less buildable area) and allows the same building heights on each type of street. This is unacceptable. Consideration of street width in determining height has been a useful and time-honored method of regulating construction in the city, the goal being to protect light and air and views. Why get rid of the distinction?
13. Rear yards in Manhattan and other heavily built areas are essential for light, air, birdsong, and access to outdoor space. The rear yards are needed. They may be less needed in the other boroughs, where auxiliary units may make sense.  Again, this brings up the issue that  one-size-proposals-do-not-fit-all-neighborhoods.
14. And even if there was a guarantee, is the trade-off worth it? There other ways to get affordable housing at the lower end of the market.
15. The plan encourages the discredited plaza bonus system in which height is given in exchange for short-lived or low-quality public “amenities”. This system does “violence to the cityscape,” in the words of Joe Rose no less, former Chair of City Planning.
16. The proposal sets landmarks and historic districts on a collision course with developers as the LPC would be forced to review and accept all sorts of new construction inside historic districts as developers decide that their FAR is “an entitlement” even inside historic districts, not a technical limit that the city provides. The proposal is creating economic incentives to harm historic districts by setting up a new FAR free-for-all.  City Planning keeps saying not tow worry, LPC will regulate these changes inside historic districts, but we have seen in Tribeca how bad LPC’s regulatory authority has become.  They let anything get built as it is, just imagine what will happen with the FAR bonus this amendment permits.
17. The plan allows developers to game the system via the Bureau of Standards and Appeals, a regulatory agency which is dominated by developer interests.
18. Floor area ratio, or FAR, was developed as a tool to manage how many humans can be squeezed into a block. If you can control the building’s envelope and the minimum size of apartments, then you affect how many people can go in, that is, the overall density. FAR was conceived as a maximum limit measure, not as an entitlement of the property owner. But the proposal treats FAR as an entitlement, not a maximum limit, as originally intended. Is this even legal? It is a seizure of the public domain.
19. The proposal is being treated as a “done deal” with community input being mostly irrelevant. New Yorkers broadly speaking were not asked for ideas on what kind of zoning changes they would like to see. This proposal comes only from developers.  This raises the question:  why do developers get to be the ones initiating such ideas?  Why not ordinary citizens?
20. It is city-wide, when obviously the city has many different neighborhoods facing different situations, so one-size-fits all policy of this type is a non-starter. It is a crude, sledgehammer approach to density management.

In sum, the whole idea is a blatant give-away to developers, with very weak public give-backs. We give up our light, air, and iconic views and the historic districts of our city, and maybe we get some affordable housing in return, but there is no guarantee even of that. 

Tribeca Trust’s board rejects the proposal and urges Community Board #1 to vote no. There are better ways to achieve the Mayor’s wish for affordable housing.

Footnotes:

1. Landmarks Conservancy Letter of 16 September, 2015
2. Civitas- Zoning for Quality and Affordablity Recommendations for Manhattan Community district 8 and 11 September 2015
3. The Upper East Side: A Framework for the Future of Five Neighborhoods: A Plannign and Zoning Study BFJ Planning, September 2015
4. NYC Mandatory Inclusionary Housing: Promoting Economically Diverse Neighborhoods, NYC Planning, September 2015
5. BFJ Comments on Zoning for Quality and Affordability for Landmarks West!, summary of findings posted here November 3, 2015 at the website of Landmarks West!

Next up, How Should we Rezone Tribeca to Save it?