Community Board To Vote On Inwood Rezoning In March

INWOOD, NY — The community board responsible for reviewing a controversial city proposal to rezone the Inwood neighborhood will not vote on a recommendation to approve or reject the proposal until March, member of the Community Board 12 land use committee announced during a Wednesday night meeting.

Each of Community Board 12's relevant committees will meet to discuss the rezoning proposal's merits and flaws in February and then again in March to draft a resolution. A public hearing dedicated to the rezoning issue will also be held by the board on Feb. 22.

Representatives from the New York City Economic Development Corporation — the city agency that formed the rezoning plan — once again presented the plan in front of the board members and public Wednesday. Presenters touted the "highly tailored" plan's ability to create housing, jobs and publicly accessible spaces on the Harlem River waterfront.

Community Board 12 land use committee chair Wayne Benjamin questioned the EDC representatives on how closely specific conditions drafted by the board in a resolution either supporting or rejecting the plan would be considered when it comes to crafting a final rezoning plan during the city's Uniform Land Use Review Procedure (ULURP).

"We take your conditions very seriously and we will look at that very closely," EDC representative Charlie Samboy told the board. "When the board makes a recommendation if it comes with conditions, we will look at those conditions and seek to address them throughout the process, and our hope is that at the end of it we can provide a response to each of those conditions."

Should the board submit conditions with its final recommendation, the city would be able to alter the proposed rezoning plan when it goes before the City Planning Commission or before the City Council for review, Samboy said.

Other members of the land use committee asked whether the zoning plan includes space for new schools in Inwood and whether the plan allows for the expansion of existing community institutions such as New York Presbyterian Hospital. Board members also voiced concerns about how in proposed up-zoned areas east of 10th Avenue buildings could reach as high as 20 or 30 stories.

On January 16 the Inwood NYC plan — which seeks to implement contextual rezoning to preserve areas west of 10th Avenue while upzoning underused areas east of 10th avenue — was certified for the Uniform Land Use Review Procedure

The city Economic Development Corporation has been pitching a neighborhood-wide rezoning to Inwood for about two years. After being booed out of a community board meeting in 2016, the corporation came back with an updated proposal in the summer of 2017 that featured contextual rezoning for areas west of 10th avenue and north of Dyckman street that aim to preserve the neighborhood's existing character.

The city estimates that the rezoning proposal will create "the potential" for 1,300 new affordable apartments int he neighborhood and publicly accessible waterfront spaces along the Harlem River.

Despite community support for extending the rezoning area south of Dyckman Street, the EDC has not changed the study area because it would have forced the city to postpone the project.

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