Clinton Beats Giuliani

[kitchen]

Hell's Kitchen Online                               7/1/99
http://hellskitchen.net "All the News the Times Won't Print"
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Clinton Beats Giuliani*
New York Times
July 1, 1999, Page B3
By ANDY NEWMAN   

A year-old city zoning rule that lets Broadway theater owners sell the development rights above
their buildings to developers of nearby sites has been overturned by a Manhattan judge.

The judge, William P. McCooe of State Supreme Court in Manhattan, ruled that the city should have
done an environmental impact statement before approving the rule, which authorizes 2.4 million
additional square feet of construction in the already congested heart of midtown.

Residents of the old tenements and low-rise apartment buildings along Eighth Avenue, who sued to
overturn the rule, had argued that the development would not only worsen crowding on the streets
and sidewalks, but would displace many tenants in Clinton, the only low- and middle-income
neighborhood in midtown.

If the decision, released on Tuesday, holds up -- the city said last night that it was considering
an appeal -- it could put a crimp in plans to expand the redevelopment of the area around Times
Square, where skyscrapers have been springing up at a dizzying rate for several years.

The decision is also a setback to theater owners, who are forbidden by law to demolish their
theaters, which are typically only a few stories high and difficult to build upon.

A property owner who buys another's unused development rights -- known as air rights -- is
entitled to build taller structures than otherwise allowed under zoning regulations. By some
estimates, theater owners stand to make as much as $100 million from selling the unused
development space above their buildings, although no air rights have been sold in the area since
the City Council passed the rule last August.

Under the city's standard zoning rules, owners can transfer air rights only to sites that are
immediately adjacent, opposite or diagonally across from the theater. The new rule allowed the
sale of air rights to the owner of any property within a 45-block swath of midtown, from 42d to
57th Street and from Eighth Avenue to Avenue of the Americas. Eighth Avenue was expected to
receive the bulk of the new development because it has the largest number of low buildings.

The city argued that the zoning change did not call for an environmental impact statement -- a
document, usually hundreds of pages long, that governments must generate before taking any action
likely to have a significant environmental effect -- because projections showed that most of the
air rights would go unused. But the projections were based on development trends in midtown from
1983 to 1993, before the start of the boom that paralleled Rudolph W. Giuliani's mayoralty.

Justice McCooe ruled that the city's projections were "contrary to recent development" and that
the city's argument that no environmental-impact statement was needed "strains credibility." He
noted that the Mayor himself was quoted as saying that he saw "the potential for a lot more
development" on Eighth Avenue because it was "right next to Broadway."

Antonia L. Bryson, the lawyer for the Clinton Special District Coalition, which brought the suit,
applauded the ruling.

"The judge recognized that it was well-nigh absurd," she said, "to render a change in the amount
of development that could take place in the most congested area in the biggest city in the country
without doing an assessment of the effect that would have on the surrounding area and
neighborhoods."

Ms. Bryson said she believes that if the decision stands, the city will not only have to prepare
an environmental-impact statement, but will have to repeat the contentious process of changing the
zoning rules.

Lorna B. Goodman, a Senior Assistant Corporation Counsel, said that the city was "very
disappointed in the decision," and added, "We are contemplating our future moves."

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* Hell's Kitchen note: this article is so hot off the presses that the New York Times 
hadn't even given the article a title, so we provided the most obvious title we could devise :)