The city’s rezoning plan has critics aplenty–the supporters of a separate ‘neighborhood plan,’ their partners who want to press beyond that plan, and several groups who want to see no rezoning at all.
A group that helped draft the East Harlem Neighborhood Plan pushed for the city’s rezoning scheme to offer more housing to low-income people. A group that opposes any rezoning denounced both proposals.
Depending on how you look at it, a proposed rezoning could either be a necessary precaution against displacement or a catalyst for rent increases in existing buildings.
It’s unclear how closely the city’s rezoning proposal will follow the most detailed community-based plan to emerge during the two-plus years of the de Blasio administration’s housing push.
The limited scope, curious criteria and advisory nature of those studies has some community advocates worried the city will miss the problems Mayor de Blasio’s zoning changes could cause.
More so than any of the other areas tabbed so far for rezonings under the mayor’s housing plan, LIC has dealt with the effects—good and bad—of Bloomberg-era land-use moves.
A release of the draft scope for the latest area targeted by the de Blasio housing plan will be pushed from May to September to allow more community engagement.
In many ways, Bay Street is like corridors in other de Blasio administration neighborhood plans. One difference is the tensions over race, policing and ‘quality of life’ that have played out there.
Legislators’ concerns over the plan to rezone East New York mirror their worries about the mayor’s citywide proposals. A deal seems likely. Its exact shape remains anybody’s guess.
The de Blasio administration’s intention to rezone parts of East New York and a corridor along Jerome Avenue have generated a lot of heat. A quieter discussion is taking place over a bid to revamp a heavily industrial chunk on the shore of Flushing Creek.
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