City of... Well, to be Honest, We Have No Idea

Like many others, yesterday I listened (and sometimes watched) the City Council hearing on the City of Yes for Economic Opportunity (COYEO). Much was said, pro and con, but the moment that stood out for me was when the Zoning Subcommittee Chair, Councilmember Kevin Riley, asked City Planning Commission Chair Dan Garodnick how many new jobs were expected to result from the proposed zoning changes. The Chair's answer: we don't know.

This is a rather shocking admission. As was repeatedly noted yesterday, the COYEO amendments encompass more than a thousand pages (1,158 to be exact). They will change the way zoning works in myriad ways, some small and technical, some big and sweeping. And yet, City Planning has no idea what will happen as a result, not even a ballpark guess. The reason for that is somewhat obvious: notwithstanding the scope and extent of the text amendments, City Planning, as lead environmental reviewer, gave its own application a negative declaration. That is: the 1,158 pages of text amendments will not have any negative impacts. None. Zero. It would be safe to say that any private applicant proposing over a thousand pages of text amendments would not get the free pass from City Planning they gave themselves.

So, there is no analysis and no data on which the decision makers - the community boards, borough boards, borough presidents and city council - may base their decisions. All they really have to go on is City Planning's assurances that the innumerable changes will have the result they say they will, that they will "accelerate the city’s economic growth and create good jobs," and "boost job growth and business expansion," among other claims. Maybe they will. But then again, maybe they won't. Nobody really knows, not even City Planning, apparently.

Don't get me wrong, there's a lot to like in COYEO - modernizing the Use Groups, for example - but there's also a lot to at least be skeptical about if not outright dislike. Expanding home occupations and allowing commercial uses in residential buildings, allowing light industrial uses in commercial overlays in residential neighborhoods, among other changes, are as likely to have negative impacts on residential quality of life as they are to have positive economic impacts.

COYEO and its companion text amendments for Carbon Neutrality and Housing Opportunity have been touted by the administration as being the most significant change to the Zoning Resolution (ZR) since it was overhauled in 1961. At best, that's a debatable assertion. The 1961 ZR was a fundamental restructuring, while the City of Yes text amendments, while extensive, stay within the ZR's existing parameters. They are less a rewrite than they are a collection of edits.

The biggest difference between them, however, is that the 1961 ZR was the result of a decade of analysis, study, reports and civic engagement, starting with?Harrison, Ballard & Allen's 1950 Plan for Rezoning the City of New York, through Voorhees Walker Smith's 1958 Zoning New York, to the numerous meeting minutes, progress reports and public hearing transcripts issued in 1959 and 1960.

In contrast, the Uniform Land Use Review Procedure (ULURP) application for COYEO was submitted on October 26, 2023, and approved by the City Planning Commission a mere five months later on March 6. The Project Description totaled just 40 pages and was mostly a narrative description of the rezoning and its goals and objectives. The Environmental Assessment Statement (EAS) was slightly more extensive, almost 200 pages, but it analyzed a mere 14 "Prototypical" sites, providing little in the way of hard data. For example, to illustrate the possible results of allowing "production or amusement" uses in commercial overlays in residential districts, the EAS presents the table and figure below, from which it concludes that, "The Proposed Action would facilitate additional commercial uses in the existing commercial space on the site. No additional floor area would be facilitated as a result of the Proposed Action." Thus, no impacts.

While an individual air quality and traffic analysis table is provided for each of the 14 Prototypical sites, there is no cumulative analysis. And there is little to no analysis or discussion as to the potential impacts in other environmental categories, including land use and public policy, socioeconomic conditions, urban design or neighborhood character. Arguably, for a text change that could apply to thousands of individual properties in every neighborhood in every borough, analyzing just one site in isolation, and only with regard to two impact categories, would hardly seem to provide sufficient data from which it can be concluded that COYEO will have only positive impacts and no negative impacts.

COYEO falls well short of the standards set by the 1961 zoning amendments. It also falls short of the standards for almost all recent rezonings. A case in point: the Gowanus Neighborhood Rezoning. Not only was it subject of an EIS, planning, study and civic engagement began in 2016, five years before the ULURP application was filed and approved in 2021. By contrast, while the three City of Yes initiatives were announced almost two years ago, in June 2022, for almost a year and a half, City Planning largely worked behind closed doors drafting the COYEO text amendments until November 2023 when the ULURP application was submitted and public review began. Just five months later, the Planning Commission approved it.

It appears that COYEO, despite some opposition, will likely be approved by the City Council - substantially if not entirely as currently written. If so, one can only hope that it will have all the benefits City Planning and the Mayor say it will, with no negative impacts, as City Planning and the Mayor say it will not. But all during yesterday's public hearing, a paraphrase of an old adage kept going through my mind: "Rezone in haste, repent at leisure."