New York’s Mayor’s Office is proposing to use a fast track approach for small- and medium-size residential developments by adopting new rules to exempt housing developments up to a certain size from further environmental review.
Under the City Administrative Procedure Act, the Mayor’s Office has issued a notice of a proposed new rule which it says is an adoption of an existing City Planning Commission rule.
The move would exempt housing developments up to a certain size from further environmental review by the Mayor’s Office.
“The purpose of the amendment to the rules is to avoid unnecessary and time-consuming environmental analyses when the Mayor’s Office proposes to approve, fund, or undertake new housing developments up to a certain size, and accompanying small commercial developments, where those developments will not have significant adverse environmental impacts,” reads a notice of a public hearing about the changes.
Based on an analysis of past environmental reviews, the Mayor’s Office has concluded that housing developments of up to 250 new units in higher and medium density districts and up to 175 new units in lower density districts that meet certain other density-related and site-specific criteria “do not result in significant adverse impacts”, the public notice states.
The density-related criteria include maximum sizes for accompanying non-residential community facilities or commercial uses to ensure no transportation impacts, maximum building heights to ensure no shadows impacts, and maximum construction durations to avoid construction impacts.
Green Fast Track for Housing would streamline the development process by adopting a new Type II rule under the State Environmental Quality Review Act (SEQRA) and City Environmental Quality Review (CEQR), the Mayor's Office says.
Acting through the Office of Environmental Coordination, the rules would be amended to exempt certain housing and related actions from review under the SEQRA and CEQR procedures.
“These environmental analyses can take six to eight months to complete and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, adding unnecessary costs and delay to the City’s ability to address its housing crisis,” the notice states.
The Mayor’s Office will hold a joint public hearing with the City Planning Commission on the proposed rule at 10 a.m. on Feb. 7 at the New York City Planning Commission’s hearing room at 120 Broadway, New York, New York.
Anyone can comment on the proposed rules as follows:
- Submit comments to the Mayor’s Office through the NYC rules website
- Email comments to [email protected]
- Mail comments to Esther Brunner, Deputy Director, Office of Environmental Coordination, 100 Gold St., 2nd Floor, New York, NY 10038.
- Fax comments to the Mayor’s Office at 212-312-0734.
- Sign up to speak at the hearing at this link
