Rezoning Victorian Flatbush

Flatbush Life has a big story on plans to re-zone Victorian Flatbush, and Joel Siegel, the co-president of the Ditmas Park West Neighborhood Association, emails over a link to a petition they're sending the City Planning Commission, which is currently weighing the changes.

The details are complicated, but the petition basically asks that the commission downzone the residential sections of the neighborhood beyond what the commission currently has planned, to keep lots from getting, as they see it, overbuilt.

The Commission is presenting its plan on June 12th at PS 249, on Caton Avenue between Marlborough and Rugby.

Here, if you're interested in the gory details, is Seigel's case:

[M]uch of what we asked for is being done: re-drawing the lines around Stratford Road and the area north of Dorchester Road to eliminate much of the areas under R-6, which allow for apartment buildings. However, there is an issue that still needs to be sorted out. The bulk of our neighborhood is currently zoned R3-2, which allows many types of buildings we do not want, such as row houses and semi-detached homes, but not apartment buildings. There is also no numerical limit on the number of housing units, but other restrictions, such as the lot size, floor-area-ratio and height limits, effectively restrict the number of units to 2 or 3. And the chances of a developer purchasing a number of contiguous homes and building row houses are pretty slim, considering the cost involved. Therefore, we have not pushed to change this zoning designation. However, the Planning Commission has proposed to alter it to an R-4A, which only allows 1 and 2 family detached homes. This sounds OK, except that it increases the total allowable buildable living area on a lot to be 75% of lot size, rather than the current 50%. Many of our homes are already technically overbuilt, though some are not. This would allow people to build out in some homes, depending on the situation, either in the front or rear of the house, and change the character and look of of the existing homes, which are already quite large.

A different designation that we proposed is R-3X. This would also only allow only 1 and 2 family detached homes, but limit the floor-area-ratio to 50% - what our current zoning allows. We feel this is the ideal designation to preserve our neighborhood as built.