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Zoning hearing a 7-plus hour marathon

THE CITY'S zoning code sucks. It was adopted when John F. Kennedy was president, and is about as effective and efficient as using a typewriter to keep up with your friends on Facebook.

    by DAVID GAMBACORTA
    Published 

THE CITY'S zoning code sucks.

It was adopted when John F. Kennedy was president, and is about as effective and efficient as using a typewriter to keep up with your friends on Facebook.

That view was seemingly held by all the developers, politicians and concerned residents who packed City Council chambers yesterday for a marathon hearing on a potential new zoning code.

The Zoning Code Commission (ZCC) has spent the last four years trying to craft a simpler, sensible and more modern code, which the commission hopes Council will vote on before the end of the year.

Plenty is at stake - the code lays out what types of properties and businesses can be built and operated in neighborhoods across the city.

But the odds are that you didn't have a chance to attend the hearing, which stretched on for more than seven hours before being recessed close to rush hour. Lucky for you, the Daily News has whipped up a list of some highlights from the epic hearing:

* Developers heavily favor the new code. David Perlman,president of the Building Industry Association, noted that the current code often makes it impossible for builders to know what can be built at a particular site. The new code would make the city more "attractive" to developers, he said.

* Councilmen Brian O'Neill and Bill Green, who have long voiced concern about immediately implementing the code, signaled that they support its passage. "I don't want to waste four years," O'Neill said.

Questions were raised about how the code would affect the location of bed-and-breakfasts (and, by implication, boarding houses). ZCC executive director Eva Gladstein said that B&Bs will be allowed by right in some neighborhoods but will require board approval in others.

More questions and anecdotal asides were raised than can possibly be printed here - and there's more to come. In light of the concerns voiced, the ZCC will discuss possible changes to the new code with Council. Changes will be reviewed on Sept. 27 during a 10 a.m. hearing in Council chambers.