Inwood Residents Sue City To Block Neighborhood Rezoning

INWOOD, NY — A coalition of Inwood residents and advocacy groups filed a lawsuit Monday to prevent the city's efforts to rezone the neighborhood for greater residential and commercial density.

The group, called Inwood Legal Action, filed its Article 78 lawsuit in New York Supreme Court. The lawsuit argues that the city's environmental review process for the rezoning was flawed because it did not properly account for the displacement of neighborhood residents living with preferential rents or the displacement of Inwood's small businesses.

Congressman Adriano Espaillat and State Senator-elect Robert Jackson voiced support for the legal challenge on during a Monday morning press conference.

"The plan to rezone Inwood will speed up gentrification & push out low-income residents. It will have a long-term devastating impact on the future of our community & potentially uproot [13th district] residents, families, and family-owned businesses that call Inwood home," Espaillat said in a statement posted to his social media accounts.

Both Jackson and Espaillat voiced concerns about the city's plans to rezone Inwood before the City Council approved the plan in August.

The city's plan will rezone 59 blocks north of Dyckman Street to increase density and allow for greater residential and commercial development along 10th Avenue and in the largely industrial areas east of 10th Avenue. The blocks west of 10th Avenue are being rezoned in an effort to preserve the neighborhood's current residential character by implementing R7A zoning — a mid-density rezoning that caps building heights.

Local City Councilman Ydanis Rodriguez touted the plan as a win for a neighborhood that had been rapidly losing rent-stabilized housing units with little below-market housing being constructed.

Rodriguez doubled down on his support of the plan Monday, saying that he worked to put fort a plan while other elected officials chose inaction.

"I supported a responsible and contextual rezoning because I believe it will catapult economic development in the technology, health, science industries while creating a Latino food destination and good paying jobs for the working and middle classes of Inwood," Rodriguez said in a statement.

A spokesman for the city Law Department said that the city "stands by the approvals it made authorizing this important initiative" and that it will review the lawsuit.

Read more about the rezoning plan.

Photo courtesy Congressman Adriano Espaillat