Tenant’s reliance on past front yard requirements tops Buildings’ new policy. Thomas E. Carroll applied to Buildings for demolition and construction permits to build a single-family home on his designated plot at 607 Bayside Drive in Breezy Point, Queens, a 403-acre private community owned by Breezy Point Cooperative. Carroll leased his plot from the Cooperative in 1960, the same year the Cooperative incorporated. Carroll’s plot, like other individual plots in the Cooperative, had been historically treated as a separate zoning lot by Buildings.

Buildings’ practice in Breezy Point was to measure a zoning lot’s front yard footage starting at the center line of an adjacent service road. Carroll’s front lot line was located on the center line of a service road adjacent to the plot. Though the service road was unmapped, it was open, used by residents and emergency vehicles, and accepted by Buildings as a functioning street. (read more…)