By Patrick Hedlund
DNAinfo News Editor
EAST VILLAGE — Local advocates concerned about the influx of high-rise development scored a victory Monday when the city agreed to consider rezoning portions of Third and Fourth avenues to preserve the neighborhood’s low-rise character.
The Department of City Planning voted this week to begin the public review process for a plan that would limit building heights in the mostly residential area along eight blocks of Third and Fourth Avenues between East 9th Street and East 13th Streets, where no such restrictions currently exist.
The changes come in response to New York University’s construction of a 26-story dormitory on East 12th Street near Third Avenue — which now stands as the East Village’s tallest building.
The city planning department spent years working with Community Board 3, local elected officials, and the Department of Housing Preservation and Development to come up with a rezoning plan that would prevent such oversized structures from rising in the future.
“I am pleased to advance this proposal and continue our constructive relationship with this community and its elected officials,” City Planning Commissioner Amanda Burden said in a statement.
“This plan ensures that future development will respect the existing scale and character of this residential community, balancing neighborhood preservation with modest residential growth…,” Burden added.
The plan would also provide incentives for building permanently affordable housing in the area, and would allow city planning officials to restrict the size of new large office buildings, dormitories and other community facilities, officials said.
The area in question is generally characterized by low- to mid-rise residential and mixed-use buildings with a strong “street wall” — or buildings that conform to a common height at their bases, according to City Planning.
The proposed rezoning caps residential building heights at 120 feet and mandates that their bases rise at least between 60 and 85 feet to maintain the street wall.
Developers would also receive bonuses to build over a larger floor area if they opt make 20 percent of their units affordable to area residents based on their annual incomes.
The rezoning proposes to prevent high-rise dormitories — like the two other NYU residences that line Third Avenue, at 11th and 9th streets — from sprouting along the corridors in the future.
“It’s really important to get this done as quickly as possible, and in this case it’s been five years in the making,” said Andrew Berman, executive director of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, which has been a vocal watchdog of NYU’s development plans.
“City Planning was adamant in its unwillingness to move on the rezoning for several years, so this is quite a turnaround.”
More than 110 blocks in the East Village and Lower East Side were shielded from overbuilding by similar rezoning changes in late 2008.
The public has 60 days to comment on the plan as part of the city’s Uniform Land Use Review Procedure before it moves to the Borough President’s office, the City Planning Department and the City Council for final approval.
