Cleaner, greener zoning regs are in the works in NYC

Mayor Eric Adams is asking community boards to say “yes” to a citywide zoning initiative that will help New York City become carbon neutral by 2050.

The text amendment touches on everything that keeps the city running – from solar panels to energy storage, building retrofits, electric cars, wastewater treatment, and rooftop gardens. It updates aspects of the city’s 2012 Zone Green text amendment rendered obsolete by new city and state climate benchmarks.

City planning staff are shopping it around to the borough presidents and all 59 of the city’s volunteer community boards this month. They’ll have until July 3 to formally weigh in.

Only Manhattan Community Board 3 has done so thus far, passing a favorable resolution May 23.

Others, including Bronx Community Board 8, will need to make haste. CB8’s land use committee discussed the text amendment Monday following a presentation by the city agency in charge, and anticipated holding a committee vote the same evening. However, the committee decided to hold off on the vote until just before the next full board meeting.

The current public review period marks the first neighborhood-level test of “City of Yes” — the mayor’s three-pronged vision to reduce the city’s carbon footprint, grow the post-pandemic economy, and reach a “moonshot” of building half a million homes over the next decade.

For co-op and condo board members, the zoning proposal coincides with peak anxiety over another climate initiative, Local Law 97, which sets emissions limits for the city’s largest buildings, and is expected to curtail 6 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions by 2030. It is the cornerstone of the city’s 2019 Climate Mobilization Act, and also complements legislation state lawmakers passed the same year to “green” New York’s electric grid.

The buildings department published the first rule detailing how the law will work earlier this year, setting off a frenzy of activity as owners realized most large buildings will need upgrades in order to comply.

The mayor’s climate and environmental justice office is offering free expert guidance and training for building managers through NYC Accelerator, a program created in 2015. But buildings that fail to make the necessary upgrades to comply with the law will face fines beginning next year.

More than 200 people from city council district 11 registered to attend a webinar on the new regulations hosted by Councilman Eric Dinowitz May 16.

“The city really isn’t interested in collecting fines,” said Beth Golub, a policy and legal director for the buildings department. “Instead, we hope that it will result in owners doing the work they need to do to bring their building emissions down, and we will be supporting owners in that endeavor along the way.”

“The city’s position is that buildings are evolving and changing,” she added. “This isn’t the end of the legislation one should expect to see out of the city. It’s only the beginning.”

And how is the zoning text amendment being received? City planning spokesperson Joe Marvilli didn’t skip a beat.

The zoning updates will bring construction codes in sync with the local law, he said since “buildings are one of the biggest sources of carbon emissions.”

City planning director Dan Garodnick is hoping community boards see the proposed zoning text amendment as a palliative.

“One of the fundamental parts of this initiative is to make sure that zoning is not a barrier to people when they are trying to comply with Local Law 97,” Garodnick said in a May 17 roundtable with reporters.

“We have some of the most ambitious climate commitments in the world, but our zoning has not kept up,” he said.

The proposed text amendment adds yard allowances so buildings can install heat pumps, and it gives owners more flexibility in updating to energy-efficient façades and insulation.

It adds slack to the city’s solar panel construction codes to increase overall rooftop coverage and provide more leniency in panel placement, not to mention entirely new locations for solar panels, like parking lots.

The changes stand to add more than 8,500 acres of potential area for solar panels in parking lots alone.

Other sections of the proposed changes are aimed at better accommodating electric vehicles, which currently make up less than 1 percent of some 2 million private vehicles in New York City.

Pulling up the city’s current zoning map, Garodnick pointed to a scattered archipelago of shaded purple blocks.

“Because of the way electric vehicle charging is characterized today, it is only legal in about half of the city’s commercial zones,” he explained.

The text amendment would more than double the available space, and prioritize new charging locations where they’re most needed, like in public garages.

Its stated purpose is to address four broad categories — energy, buildings, transportation, and waste — where the city planning department “has found ways that zoning changes could further support the city’s ambitious climate goals.”

In a change from the past, the agency invited public participation before releasing the zoning application with a series of information sessions that took place in March.

The move won praise from Bronx borough president Vanessa Gibson. “With two sessions that are open to the public, we anticipate spirited and energized exchanges that will help guide our city,” Gibson said in a statement.

Gibson signaled tacit support for the zoning text amendment earlier this spring. She underlined the urgency of reducing diesel exhaust from roadways crisscrossing the Bronx.

“Health care experts continue to link the Bronx’s high asthma, diabetes, high blood pressure and heart disease rates to carbon emissions,” Gibson said in a statement March 16.

The mayor’s zoning text amendment is “a necessary step to addressing this issue,” she said.