Proposed rezoning. Image credit: CPC.

City expected to appeal Judge’s decision invalidating the Inwood Rezoning. On December 10, 2019, Judge Verna L. Saunders of the New York State Supreme Court, New York county ruled in favor of the Northern Manhattan is Not For Sale’s Article 78 petition challenging the legality of the Inwood Rezoning. The rezoning was proposed by the city’s Economic Development Corporation and was set to up-zone 59 blocks in the Inwood neighborhood of Manhattan. Approval of the rezoning would permit property owners to build mixed-use commercial and residential developments up to thirty stories tall, where predominantly one to two story-buildings and warehouses previously existed. The plan also included nearly 1,600 new affordable housing units. Northern Manhattan is Not For Sale is an unincorporated association of individuals and organizations alleging the City failed to study the critical impacts of the rezoning before City Council approved the application on August 8, 2018. In large part Northern Manhattan is Not For Sale believes that the rezoning will displace longtime Inwood residents.

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Guidance for greenhouse gas emissions analysis and PlaNYC assessment among additions to manual. On May 17, 2010, the Mayor’s Office of Environmental Coordination released the revised City Environmental Quality Review (CEQR) Technical Manual. The manual summarizes the City’s environmental review process and provides guidance on the analysis of potential environmental impacts from projects undertaken directly by the City, financed by the City, or that rely on permits or approvals from the City. The City published the first manual in 1993, and it was last revised in 2001. The updated manual’s applicability to ongoing environmental reviews is discussed in the document’s introduction.

The manual has been revised and reorganized and now contains screening and preliminary analysis tools. It reflects changes in the review process resulting from recent legislation and new methodologies. A chapter on greenhouse gas emissions has been added that provides guidance for assessing the impacts of direct and indirect operations, mobile source, and construction emissions. The manual’s Land Use, Zoning, and Public Policy chapter now contains a sustainability consistency assessment for large, publicly sponsored projects, which uses PlaNYC as a guide to define sustainability for the purposes of environmental review. (read more…)

Two new supplemental fees created. The City Planning Commission adopted an eight percent increase in land use application fees and CEQR near fees to become effective August 10, 2009. The approved changes also include two new supplemental fees: one triggered by land use applications for all projects over 500,000 sq.ft., and another for projects that necessitate a restrictive declaration related to the environmental review.

A supplemental fee for land use applications involving projects between 500,000 and 999,000 sq.ft. will be $80,000. For construction between 1 million and 2.49 million sq.ft., the fee increases to $120,000. All projects over 2.5 million sq.ft. will trigger the maximum fee of $160,000. (read more…)