Search Results for: Land Use Law

High court denies PS 64’s conversion to dorm use

Local school affiliation a requisite for building permit. In 1998, Gregg Singer purchased PS 64 from the City, subject to the restriction that the property be used for a community facility. Singer then applied to the Department of Buildings to replace the PS 64 building, located at 609 East 9th Street, with a 19-story dormitory. Buildings asked Singer to provide a lease or deed with an educational institution to prove his proposed building was … <Read More>

Local Law to preserve housing preempted

Affordable housing programs controlled by federal and state law. After multiple hearings on the declining number of affordable housing units, the City Council passed Local Law 79 of 2005 over a mayoral veto. The law gave tenants the right of first refusal to purchase their buildings when the owners sought to remove the properties from certain assisted rental housing programs. The law also allowed tenants who did not purchase their building to stay in their … <Read More>

Lawsuit alleging cancer advances

Families near Pelham Bay landfill claim infants’ cancers caused by chemicals at dump. Sanitation closed its 81-acre landfill in Pelham Bay, Bronx in 1979 following 16 years of operations and increasing complaints over odors and a yellow mist emanating from the site. In 1983, the state declared the dump an inactive hazardous waste site prompting the City to sue 15 corporations in 1985, alleging that the corporations illegally dumped hazardous chemicals. Later that year, Sanitation … <Read More>

Dental practice use within zoning laws

218 E. 61st Street, Manhattan. Photo: Kevin E. Schultz

Neighborhood associations claimed dental office violated restrictive covenant dating back to Civil War and current zoning laws. Two neighborhood associations in the Treadwell Farm Historic District, an area bounded by 61st and 62nd Streets and Second and Third Avenues in Manhattan, sued Jak Cohane, the owner of the bottom two stories of a four-story brownstone located at 218 East 61st Street, who leased his premises to … <Read More>

Court dismisses late challenge to Museum’s renovation plans

Opponents filed claim 31 months too late. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, which leases the land in Central Park from Parks under an 1871 directive of the state legislature, proposed to renovate the museum in 2000 and presented a detailed plan to Parks and Landmarks. The plan called for a new loading dock, the addition of public cafeterias and new auditoriums. Parks Commissioner Henry Stern signed off on the plan in December 2002, noting that … <Read More>