overdevelopment

ACCORDING TO JIM / OVERDEVELOPMENT

Only once in our borough’s history has there been an effective and concerted effort to limit the irrational and rampant overdevelopment that has plagued this borough for decades.

I was there. In fact, I was the proverbial “tip of the spear” in that effort.

Who could forget the 1990’s and early 2000’s, the heyday of teardowns coupled with the construction of sub-standard housing. It was described by many as the “Wild, Wild West,” and that’s exactly what it felt like to many Staten Islanders. Anyone and everyone who called himself a “builder” was gobbling up properties to make a quick buck.

It was called the “Staten Island Growth Management Task Force,” and some seem to have forgotten it.

I haven’t.

We won many of the battles we brought to the table. But for those victories, the development we are seeing today might be exponentially worse.

But, the battles we lost at that time have come back to plague us still.

We continue to try to eliminate some of them once and for all.

The Task Force consisted of 17 members: eight government officials and nine non-government experts from the community. They met for the first time in August of 2003, with the aggressive charge of generating comprehensive recommendations for reform within four months.The Staten Island Growth Management Task Force was created in 2003 I wrote an impassioned letter to Mayor Bloomberg articulating the problem and pleading for help.

Mayor Bloomberg agreed, seeing the value in creating this Task Force to examine the problem and quickly articulate solutions.

It consisted of 17 members: eight government officials and nine non-governmental experts from the community. We met for the first time in August 2003, with the aggressive charge of generating comprehensive recommendations for reform within four months. This was a Task Force with a purpose and a need to take action… quickly.

Government, with its glacial pace of progress and aversion to change usually doesn’t act this quickly – but the problem was so acute and it was clearly an urgent necessity.

The Task Force generated fifteen recommendations just halfway into our four-month directive. This eventually became a 50-plus page report with 22 recommendations that was approved by the Mayor in December 2003. The recommendations were fast-tracked and passed by the City Council unanimously in August 2004. The plan, which designated about 90% of Staten Island’s residentially-zoned areas as Lower Density Growth Management Areas in city zoning, represented the most significant zoning changes on Staten Island since 1961—before the construction of the Verrazano Bridge. The new rules achieved the following:

Increased parking requirements,
Eliminated short/steep driveways,
Expanded yard and frontage space requirements
(mandated 30-foot backyards),
Prohibited collective treatment of multiple units
on one zoning lot,
Made private roads subject to zoning rules,
Created new standards for landscaping,
lighting, etc.

All of the changes were aimed at curbing “tear-down” building—the practice of razing a home on one zoning lot to build as many homes/units on that lot as zoning would allow.

As with any attempt to make changes of this magnitude, there were inevitably loopholes - and this was an industry with the wherewithal to discover them and exploit them. There were multiple attempts to close these loopholes, and in December 2006, the City Council unanimously approved new zoning rules that strengthened the 2004 reforms by making it more difficult to build more than one house on a single zoning lot, and expanding the scope of minimum lot width and rear yard size restrictions. The closing of this loophole significantly limited the ability of developers to build multiple structures on L-shaped lots.

In 2007, we saw the new rules bear fruit. The Department of Buildings (DOB), in an unprecedented action, forced a developer to deconstruct two back to back homes that were out of compliance with the 30-foot rear yard requirement after my staff and I alerted them that these homes were being constructed out of compliance with the rear yard requirement.

At the same time as Staten Island officials were changing the zoning rules, they were also downzoning significant portions of our borough. In December of 2003, the City Council unanimously approved the largest downzoning in our history: 38,000 lots stretching from St. George to Oakwood. This was followed by downzonings in many other neighborhoods, including Great Kills, Tottenville, Pleasant Plains, Prince’s Bay, Clove Lakes, Bay Terrace, Richmond Valley, Westerleigh, Willowbrook, Oakwood, and others.

While all this was taking place, in February of 2005 the City Council approved new text amendments aimed at curbing improper development in designated natural areas.

As soon as the Task Force wrapped up its work on residential zoning, FCM Oddo urged the mayor, City Planning and Task Force members to reform commercial zoning, especially commercial/residential overlays: the Task Force was reconvened in March, 2005 for this purpose. In August, they released reform recommendations prohibiting residential-only buildings in most commercially zoned areas (requiring either a fully commercial structure or a storefront/community facility on the ground floor); requiring landscape buffers between residential and commercial buildings, and street trees every 25 feet; subjecting any proposed project on large commercial lots to a rigorous permitting process, and other rules to ensure builder don’t transform commercial districts into overdeveloped residential tracts.

The Task Force also passed an additional set of restrictions for historic commercial districts like Port Richmond.

The City Council approved the new commercial zoning rules on December 21, 2005.

In concert with these efforts, City Planning removed commercial zoning from nearly 600 lots across Staten Island. As a result, 292 lots on the North Shore, 23 Mid-Island lots, and 280 South Shore lots became subject to Lower Density Growth Management rules as implemented in 2004.

Recognizing that it wasn’t only the rules that were the problem, but also the agency charged with enforcing the rules, in 2007, I was named as Chair of the newly established City Council Task Force on Operations and Improvement of the Department of Buildings. The Task Force ultimately held public hearings in all five boroughs, and as a result of this Task Force, DOB became a more efficient and effective agency. They received additional funding to hire more enforcement personnel, expand the scope of its enforcement operationally, and piloted a program on SI aimed at spotting zoning violations before construction commenced on a project.

It also culminated in legislation, Local Law 36 of 2007,
requiring registration of general contractors. This legislation, which I authored and negotiated with the DOB, required builders of one, two, and three family homes to be registered with the city, pay registration fees, submit proof of insurance, and provide home buyers with six year warranties.

Additional issues continued to rear their ugly heads.
In January 2011, the City Council approved new rules dealing with medical offices and day care centers in residentially zoned areas, which were creating aesthetic, parking, and safety issues in residential areas.

We have taken a moment to look back at a complicated and complex issue, but every day our team at Borough Hall is trying to address efforts to exploit continuing weaknesses in zoning rules, and still trying to win some of the same battles of yesterday.