In January 2024 Brooklyn’s Community Board 9 released the following to explain their vote against the proposed City of Yes for Economic Opportunities text amendments.
We at Community Board 9 oppose the City of Yes for Economic Opportunity text amendments in their entirety.
These are city-wide text amendments which will result in broad-brush changes across New York City, a complex city of five boroughs with neighborhoods of varied zoning, mass transit access, population size, etc. We continue to be concerned about the fact that these recommendations were made without conducting planning studies on the current commercial corridor conditions (i.e., vacancies, rents) within each community district prior to deciding if zoning changes were needed.
We believe a full environmental impact statement must be conducted on these sweeping changes because the current language in these text amendments places us at great risk of irreversible, unintended consequences negatively impacting the peace, quiet, security, health,
and street parking on residential blocks and in residential buildings. City resources are already stretched. Who will monitor and enforce adherence to guidelines as the lines between residential, commercial and manufacturing zones are further blurred?
In addition to our opposition to the individual proposals which clearly apply to our district, we discovered numerous objectionable changes throughout the 664 pages of zoning text which were not mentioned in the original public presentations held by the Department of City Planning (DCP) in July and September. In particular, a series of new special permits would allow nearly all remaining environmental and performance standards to be waived. These changes, combined with the questionable negative environmental assessment, raise red flags suggesting an unacceptable intent to do away with nearly all zoning distinctions and
environmental standards while evading public review. We therefore urge DCP to start again by consulting community boards first…
Link to the full resolution including feedback for specific text amendments.
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