NYC Planning Commission Hearing
on Carroll Gardens/ Columbia Street Contextual Rezoning
on Carroll Gardens/ Columbia Street Contextual Rezoning
Amanda Burden, Chairperson of the NYC Planning Commission
Carroll Gardener Rick Luftglass
39th Council District Candidate and Carroll Gardens Resident Gary Reilly
Jerry Armer Testifying for Community Board 6
Raul Rothblatt, Director of the Four Borough Neighborhood Preservation Alliance
Carroll Gardens Neighborhood Association President Maria Pagano
Tom Gray from Councilman Bill De Blasio's office
The Carroll Gardens/ Columbia Waterfront Contextual Re-Zoning continued its progress through the Uniform Land Use Review Procedure (ULURP) on Wednesday, when area residents had a chance to testify in front of New York City's Planning Commission.
About a dozen speakers, some representing the Coalition For Respectful Development (CORD), and the Carroll Gardens Neighborhood Association, thanked the Brooklyn Office of City Planning for their efforts to rezone Carroll Gardens and the Columbia Waterfront in order to protect the character and scale of this brownstone neighborhood. The plan calls for a zoning of R6B on most of the residential blocks, which will impose a height limit of 50 feet on the buildings.
But most every speaker commented on what many saw as a flaw in the re-zoning plan: the Office of City Planning is proposing to up-zone several blocks of Columbia Street, Henry Street and Clinton Street to R6A, which has a height limit of 70 feet.
This concern has been raised by local residents at every stop of the ULURP process. The office of City Planning claims that the R6A designation is needed to bring the buildings on those blocks into compliance, since they are already bigger than brownstones on surrounding blocks.
Amanda Burden, the Chairperson of the NYC Land Use Committee, explained that the re-zoning was a framework which would bring current out-of-scale buildings into compliance. The R6A designation for those particular pockets within the neighborhood would accomplish that.
Local residents seemed doubtful. Carroll Gardener Rick Luftglass felt that R6A was an up-zoning, increasing the Floor Area Ratio (FAR) from 2.2 to 3.00, thereby creating an incentive to homeowners on those blocks to use the extra FAR to build roof additions.
Unfortunately, it seems that the Office of City Planning does not possess the tools to properly deal with a case such as this. What is needed, in essence, is a special zoning in between an R6A and R6B to not only bring the out of scale buildings into compliance, but also to limit any additional height.
It seems unlikely that these tools will be created any time soon.
What a pity. As resident Maryann Young stated: "If Mayor Bloomberg can come up with the tools to run for a 3rd term," City Planning should be able to come up with to create a special zoning which would truly protect the neighborhood.
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6 comments:
Right on Maryann!!! Your comment is spot-on. So many people in the community are speaking to closed ears and minds who do not have the brain power or willingness to use their political capital to protect Carroll Gardens. If Mayor Mike wanted this dispensation it would happen.
Mayor Mike, where are you??? Please help protect your middle class.
Mayor Mike protect "his" middle class? What a joke. Bloomie doesn't care about protecting Carroll Gardens. His brain is so twisted and will use any ploy to bring more development. Will change our neighborhood profoundly, put more people on the F train, and squish more kids in our over-crowded schools. Mayor Mike protects his developer cronies for a short-term profit. He doesn't give a shit about us, so don't look to him for help.
So CORD and the anti-development people (the relatively small group of vocal people in this hood) won't be happy until no one can build anything? It's not enough that thousands of homeowners are losing the right to add a floor or two to their houses? No one should be able to add anything?
But oh wait, we're not landmarked, so any new building can still be as ugly as sin.
Seems backwards to me...
Dear Mr. Batman,
Just for the record, it's not a matter of being anti-development, but rather wanting development to be community-responsive and sensitive to the physical and historical context of a neighborhood. It's a historic, low-scale neighborhood, and building height, architecture and materials should maintain that character. City Planning did a great job in this process and we're very pleased at their collaborative spirit in working with the community. The new zoning is what's known as "contextual zoning," and that's a positive, but there is a gap in the city's zoning policy: in the proposed zoning change, the Floor Area Ratio (FAR) jumps from 2.0 in the R6B zone to 3.0 in the R6A zone. There's nothing in between. That may sound like a technicality, but FAR is a core element of the calculation for density and height, and that jump will have a very tangible impact on these streets. In addition to risking new buildings of up to 70 feet tall, it opens the door for the kind of out-of-context additions that are increasingly common. Walk the streets and you'll see some examples. Perhaps there's a viable mid-point between 2.0 and 3.0 that would be closer to the current context and not overly impinge on an owner's flexibility. That's one scenario. Another scenario is landmarking (a lengthy process that is under the purview of the Landmarks Commission rather than City Planning), or perhaps City Planning can come up with other approaches that strike this balance. Public policy is supposed to be responsive to the public, and in this case the public is expressing the need for a relatively modest change in the existing policy. Somehow, that doesn't seem like an unreasonable request.
78% of the homes within the R6B have streetwalls that exceed the 40 feet allowed in the R6B so the environemntal assessment statement is incorrect.
There's plenty of floor area at the 2.2FAR to add to homes but instead of adding a fifth floor, set back from the street, the addition will now fill the rear yard (actually, it will preserve 20 feet of yard space - oh joy).
You can kiss stoops goodbye on vacant lots - all new buildings will look like 127 4th Place - UGLY!
This really stinks.
To say City planning can't create a new zoning designation (R6c) is just stupid - City Planning is the agency that creates zoning. R6c could allow 2.5FAR and a maximum of 55 feet - no big deal.
It is sad that we live in a world run by stupid people. Hopefully, our children will do better.
Rick -
You think there's a midpoint between 2.0 and 3.0? I wonder what it is...maybe that midpoint would be the 2.2 permitted on narrow streets under the old R6 classifications?
But no, the, yes, anti-development, forces in the hood were unhappy with that also. Take a look around this neighborhood. There aren't pockets of R6A zoning. There are pockets of smaller houses. Once you cross Court Street, the heights rise. Once you go down towards the canal, they get lower. There are New Orleans style row houses on Sackett, Key West-esque wood paneling on Henry Street, gorgeous untouched brownstones by the park, and big apartment buildings on 3rd.
The ONLY thing done by this proposed action is to limit height in most areas, and slightly increase it in others. It does not protect stoops, or front gardens, or materials, or colors. It does not address what the character of the community is, only the built height of it.
And no one complains about the towering brownstones on 1st and Carroll. Because they're beautiful. But if someone put up a brick building the same size, or god forbid something of glass, steel or wood, everyone would be up in arms!
So, the point is is that it's really about taste and what the built environment looks like. And this action does NOTHING to regulate what buildings look like, only how high they go.
And no, Katia won't post this on her main page, because it does not support the message that he and her husband are trying to broadcast.
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