Carroll Gardeners Urge NYC Planning Commission To Re-Think R6A Zoning Pockets

NYC Planning Commission Hearing
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

Norman Cox, of the Columbia Waterfront Neighborhood Association

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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