Rick has left this comment on the post "Carroll Gardeners Urge NYC Planning Commission To Re-think R6A Zoning Pockets":
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.
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