Image credit: New York City Bar Association

A centennial symposium will celebrate the Nation’s first comprehensive zoning resolution: Leaders will look to past and future impact of zoning on the shaping of better cities. The Department of City Planning, in partnership with the New York City Bar Association, announced an all-day symposium titled Zoning at 100: A Symposium for the Future to take place on September 15, 2016. The symposium marks the 100th anniversary of the City’s Zoning Resolution which, when established in 1916, was the Nation’s first comprehensive regulation controlling land use and development.

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Example of an enlargement pursuant to a BSA-approved special permit in Brooklyn Community District 10 (original residence shown on the left). Click Photo to enlarge. Image credit: Brooklyn Community Board 10

Special Permit was meant to allow growing families to expand their familial residences, but Brooklyn Community Board 10 argues that its usage has been abused. On June 20, 2016, a proposal was presented to the City Planning Commission to amend the New York City zoning text relating to the Board of Standards and Appeals Special Permit provisions under Section 73-622, which provides for the enlargement of one- and two-family detached and semi-detached residences. Currently, Section 73-622 only applies to four Community Districts, and it permits additions to the perimeter wall height, and extensions into the requisite rear yards and side yards of the residences located within those Community Districts.

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Zoning resolution prohibited apartment dweller from placing illuminated “Peace” sign in 17th floor window. In 2010 Brigitte Vosse placed an illuminated “Peace” sign in the window of her seventeenth-floor condo in The Ansonia at 2109 Broadway in the Upper West Side of Manhattan.  The Department of Buildings fined her $800 for violating a zoning ordinance restricting illuminated signs in her neighborhood at heights above forty feet.  Vosse argued that the City placed a content-based restriction on her speech, citing an exemption in the Zoning Resolution for flags, banners, or pennants of a civic, philanthropic, educational, or religious nature.  Vosse also argued even if content-neutral, the regulation was an unreasonable “time, place, and manner” restriction on her speech.

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Zoning restrictions against adult businesses survive trial on adequacy of prior study. The Department of City Planning conducted a study on the negative secondary effects of adult businesses in the City, and concluded in 1993 that such businesses increased crime and lowered property values. Based on this study, the City in 1995 amended the zoning resolution to restrict the location of adult businesses in certain areas, banned the enlargement of existing adult uses, and prohibited the change of any use to an adult use. The amendment also defined “adult establishment” as a commercial establishment where a substantial portion (40 percent or more of accessible floor area) of the establishment included adult uses. Some adult businesses closed, but others remained legal by keeping their adult material within less than 40 percent of their accessible floor areas.

The City believed these 60/40 percent businesses were in sham compliance based on actual adult versus non-adult material sales receipts. In 2001, the City amended the zoning resolution again in 2001 to prevent stores which focused on providing adult material from avoiding the adult establishment restrictions. Adult businesses challenged the constitutionality of the amendments and sought a preliminary injunction. (read more…)

ALJ declined to alter agreement that prevented Buildings from enforcing certain Zoning Resolution provisions relating to advertising signs. Buildings inspectors observed an advertising sign exceeding 200 sq.ft. on a building’s facade at 67 Greenwich Street in lower Manhattan. The building’s C5-5 zoning prohibited advertising signs and restricted non-illuminated signs to 200 sq.ft. Buildings charged the facade occupant OTR Media Group Inc. and building owner Syms Corp. with violating the Zoning Resolution and the construction code, and sought an order of removal.

OTR and Syms sought to dismiss the charge, arguing that the sign was located within 200 ft. of an arterial highway, and as such, fell within the scope of a prior agreement between Buildings and OTR that enjoined Buildings from enforcing certain advertising sign regulations. Under the agreement, Buildings could not seek to remove OTR advertising signs located within manufacturing districts or C6-5, C6- 7, C7, and C8 commercial districts until the courts decided an OTR constitutional challenge to certain sections of the Zoning Resolution. Although the building was located in a C5-5 district, OTR and Syms believed the agreement applied in this instance since the sign, like those protected under the agreement, was in a commercial district near a major highway. (read more…)

City claimed that West Side residential buildings were illegally converted to transient hotels. In October 2007, a lower court granted the City’s request for a preliminary injunction against three Upper West Side residential buildings, the Montroyal, the Continental, and the Pennington, ordering them to stop using the SROs as transient hotels. The court found that the transient use violated both the Zoning Resolution and the buildings’ certificates of occupancy. Although the multiple dwelling law allowed minimal transient use, the three buildings were using a significant portion of their rooms for transients. (read more…)