Additional hearing on park status set for August 2007. State Assemblyman Adam Clayton Powell, IV and Upper East Side residents opposed the City’s plan to reopen the marine transfer station at East 91st Street in Manhattan as part of the Bloomberg administration’s Solid Waste Management Plan. The parties filed an article 78 petition, alleging that the environmental impact statement for the entire waste management plan was insufficient since it failed to adequately assess the construction … <Read More>
Search Results for: Article 78 Petition
BSA overturned on Queens vested rights case
Buildings made initial error in not issuing building permit. In 2003, Hamida Realty sought plan approval from the Department of Buildings for two, three-family homes on two adjacent lots that would share a foundation and a common wall. Buildings approved the plans, but Hamida waited over a year to apply for permits. When it applied, Buildings granted the permit for one building, but held the second permit, erroneously requiring Hamida to submit a site safety … <Read More>
Challenge to Javits Center expansion rebuffed
Court finds environmental review for the Hudson Yards sufficient to cover changes to Javits plan. The plan to expand the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center underwent changes since the approval of the final environmental impact statement for the Hudson Yards rezoning plan in 2004. When in July 2006 the Empire State Development Corporation approved the changes without a supplemental EIS, four Hell’s Kitchen residents, the Municipal Art Society and the Hell’s Kitchen Neighborhood Association challenged … <Read More>
To attorney Paul Selver, the Market Matters Most
When asked to recall projects throughout his 35-year career, land use attorney Paul Selver’s discussion becomes a vivid narrative of how the economy translates into New York City’s physical changes. Selver sees 1977 as the point when developers started looking ahead for the first time; the 1981 to 1988 development boom coincided with the economy’s exuberance and ended with the stock market crash. To Selver, his current projects, like a six-block rezoning in Coney Island, … <Read More>
Council ordered to grant sidewalk cafe application
Council’s denial of permit based only on community opposition overturned. Jack Bistro, a restaurant at 80 University Place in Manhattan, applied for a sidewalk cafe permit to add outdoor seating. After a public hearing, DCA recommended approval. Community Board 2, which received the application from DCA for comment, recommended denial, citing the community’s “longstanding tradition” against outdoor seating along University Place.
When the application went to City Council, opponents reiterated that the community was against … <Read More>
Council overturned on refusal to remove use restriction
Brooklyn developer still cannot build housing. Middleland Inc. sought to rezone three lots on DeKalb Avenue and Spencer Street in Brooklyn and remove a 1975 restriction recorded on the site that limited its use to accessory parking for an adjacent IBM plant, closed since 1993 and now occupied by a Home Depot. Middleland planned to construct housing on its site.
Despite the Planning Commission’s approval, the City Council rejected both of Middleland’s requests, citing the … <Read More>