Environmental Analysis; Review and Study
Once a pre-application is received from the Community Board, the City will decide to allocate funds to do an Environmental analysis of the proposed plan. This is a commitment on the part of the City, because these analyses are expensive and time consuming. They can take to up to several months to a few years to complete depending upon the scope of the area etc..
More affluent or connected communities have opted to have their own studies performed, normally using a well established educational institution to do it like Pratt University, because the City isn’t always as thorough or can make rulings that are not favorable to the community.
For example, in the case of 626 Flatbush, an Environmental Review was done, and it was decided that adding almost 300 to 500 more cars into one of most heavily traffic area in Brooklyn – Flatbush, wouldn’t increase traffic. Thus an Environmental Study wasn’t performed, which was the basis of PPEN’s lawsuit.
An Environmental Review will look at *several conditions; air quality, water and sewage, traffic, construction impacts, etc… and make a determination if a more in depth study is required if these conditions will be altered.
This is known as an Environmental Study. The more areas they determine need to have additional studies the more expensive and time consuming the Environmental Analysis becomes. It could also deter or limit certain types of construction or place more of a burden upon the City or the Developers to correct or address these issues being affected.
In the case of up zoning Empire Blvd., most of the Environmental Review should call for additional studies because of the tremendous change that would occur. Just in water and sewage or traffic. However, this doesn’t mean that the study would stop the project, it just means someone either the City or the Developers will have to address the issues.
*It will not look at the decrease in affordable housing units, the potential displacement of people of color and other social issues that the community is concerned with.
Again we have simplified this process but this is the framework.
So we say to you, why would the City want us to keep residential on the application process and then do all these studies and spend all this money if they were going to at the end say no to Residential? That is because they won’t! They would say, we did this Environmental Analysis, we invested the time and money to determine if this is a good project and we think this is good project for the City of New York and we are going to go forward. And they will!
That is why we must stop this right here and now!
No Environmental Study!
No Environmental Review!
No Residential on Empire Blvd.!
Contextualize Empire Blvd.
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