Image Credit: DCP.

Traffic congestion in 2013 stems in large part from how the City has allocated street space among motorists, pedestrians, bicyclists, CitiBike stations, pedicabs, and horse-drawn carriages. While changes to address street space allocations can be anticipated, the logic and purpose of the allocations have changed over time.

Act I – Suffocation on the Streets

Facing public streets “choked” with cars, the City in 1950 amended the 1916 Zoning Resolution to require developers of residential buildings to provide off-street parking. In approving this controversial amendment, City Planning Commission Chairman Jerry Finkelstein silenced opponents of the proposal, noting: “The policy of this Commission is and will continue to be: Get parked cars off the City’s streets. . . . We wouldn’t have the congestion today in Manhattan and Brooklyn, if this amendment had been made law 25 years ago.”

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View of the former gas station lot at St. Nicholas Avenue and 122nd Street. Credit: Google.

BSA granted use, area, and parking variances to permit construction of 13-story residential, commercial, and community facility building. Nicholas Parking Corporation and Ladera, LLC, owners of adjacent properties at 223-237 St. Nicholas Avenue, applied for building permits to develop a 169,192-square-foot, mixed-use building on St. Nicholas Avenue between West 121st and West 122nd Streets in Harlem. The project would include a FRESH program food store on the first floor and cellar, a preschool facility on the second floor, and 164 residential units on the remaining floors. Manhattan Community Board 10 disapproved of the project based upon the proposal’s lack of affordable housing.

On February 23, 2012, the Department of Buildings (DOB) denied the permit to build the project because the site sits partially within an R7A and an R8A/C2-4 zoning district. Part of the proposed FRESH program food store would extend 970 sq.ft. into the R7A district, which does not allow for commercial use. In addition, the proposal calls for only 30 of the 66 accessory parking spaces required by the Zoning Resolution to be off-site at a property one block away instead of on the site itself. Finally, the proposed lot coverage exceeds the maximum amount allowed by the Zoning Resolution by 689 sq.ft. on the corner lot.

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Special rules seek to protect residential neighborhoods and encourage development of day care and medical facilities in commercial districts. On January 18, 2011, the City Council approved the Department of City Planning’s amendment to the Lower Density Growth Management Area (LDGMA) regulations that apply to Staten Island and Bronx Community District 10. The amendment limits the development of out-of-context medical facilities and day care centers in low-density residential areas and encourages their construction in commercial districts. It also eases commercial regulations that restricted residential expansion and development in appropriate areas of Staten Island.

The amendment is the latest modification to the City’s LDGMA zoning regulations applicable to areas within Staten Island and Bronx CD 10 which are characterized by rapid growth, high vehicle ownership, and limited access to mass transit. 1 CityLand 4 (Oct. 15, 2004), 2 CityLand 164 (Dec. 2005). The City last revised the LDGMA regulations to close a parking requirement loophole in the Throgs Neck section of the Bronx. 7 CityLand 37 (April 15, 2010). (more…)

Image: NYCEDC

Municipal parking lot would be replaced with multi-building development offering market-rate and affordable housing and 1.5 acres of open space. On June 23, 2010, the City Planning Commission approved two separate but related proposals that would facilitate the redevelopment of a 5.5-acre, 1,101-space municipal parking lot bounded by 37th and 39th Avenues and Union and 138th Streets in downtown Flushing, Queens. The Commission approved the City Economic Development Corporation, Rockefeller Group Development Corporation, and TDC Development Corporation’s proposal to build a 1.89 million sq.ft. mixed-use project, known as Flushing Commons, on the parking lot. The Commission also approved the Department of Housing Preservation and Development’s proposal to allow the Macedonia AME Church to build an affordable housing project, known separately as Macedonia Plaza, on a portion of the lot not set aside for the Flushing Commons project.

In 2004, the City’s Downtown Flushing Task Force targeted the 5.5- acre municipal lot for redevelopment. After a formal RFP process in June 2005, EDC selected Rockefeller and TDC to redevelop the lot. The proposal would include replacing the lot with a five-building complex, ranging in height from five to seventeen stories, surrounding 1.5 acres of publicly accessible open space. The project would provide 620 units of market rate housing, 405,000 sq.ft. of commercial space, a YMCA, and a 1,600-space underground garage. (more…)

Proposal includes options for single- and multi-tenant building on site currently occupied by the Hotel Pennsylvania. On February 8, 2010, the City Planning Commission certified Vornado Realty Trust’s application to build a 2.05 million sq.ft. office tower at 15 Penn Plaza in Manhattan. The site is across the street from Madison Square Garden and Penn Station, and is currently occupied by the Vornado- controlled 1,700-room Hotel Pennsylvania. Vornado would demolish the hotel to build the tower, and it intends to construct an as-of-right building if it does not obtain approval for the proposed project. In order to increase development flexibility and ensure that it can begin construction as soon as possible, Vornado’s application included two different building plans. It originally proposed two building scenarios that would have provided 2.84 and 2.65 million sq.ft. of floor area respectively. 6 CityLand 7 (Feb. 15, 2009). The reduced certified proposal, however, showed two buildings that would each total 2.05 million sq.ft. of floor area. According to Vornado, the designs cannot be blended, and it intends to build one or the other of the proposed options.

A single-tenant, 67-story building option would feature a ten-story, 218-foot tall base with a tapered tower rising to 1,190 feet and no setback along the Seventh Avenue frontage. The tower proposal would provide 2.04 million sq.ft. of office space and 12,000 sq.ft. of retail space on the ground floor. (more…)