Lee Ellman is an AICP urban planner. He served as Planning Director from 1990 and retired as Deputy Planning Commissioner of the Yonkers Department of Planning and Development.
The rezoning of the Domino Sugar Refinery site is a case of “Ready-Shoot-Aim” where there was no study of alternatives, no study of the potential impacts of the actions taken by the City Council and no opportunity for the community living around the new development site to have any say into what was going to happen to their area. The Council and Mayor Spano’s administration in their haste to make something (anything!?) happen gave up the opportunity to learn from previous Yonkers projects and to improve upon past achievements.
Jim Cavanaugh’s letter in support of the rezoning notes that “good zoning steers future development” leaves out the meat of what makes a good zoning process. A community should undertake good planning that leads to good zoning that then steers good development. Good planning investigates the potential desirable uses for a particular property, reviews those in a thoughtful study and with an examination of the alternatives available to the community and the potential impacts of these alternatives. Not only is this common sense but it is written into almost 100 years of zoning and legal practice that holds that municipal zoning actions must come from comprehensive planning.
Prior Zone Changes had a Planning Process
The Council and the Mayor’s administration have a number of examples where a good planning process with the involvement of the Council and the public lead to good zoning and then to good development. The DMX, Downtown Mixed Use zone, was created after several years of study and a robust public involvement process to energize the DOWNTOWN. Decisions were made about the kinds of uses that were desirable for the health and growth of the downtown. Careful study led to the placement of these new uses within the pattern of streets and existing uses present in the historic central business district. The DMX zone proposed uses and building heights that were particularly suited to the downtown and that were sensitive to existing uses that might have been impacted by too tall buildings.
For example, the Post Office site was not zoned for the tallest possible buildings in order to protect the newly built Saw Mill River Daylighting Park from shadows cast by tall buildings that would have darkened that park all day long undoing it’s great design. By not placing the highest density at that site (admittedly an otherwise great site for high density residential being across the street from the Yonkers Railroad Station) it also gave protection to an historic building that the community voiced as important to preserve during the planning process.
Zero Environmental Impact Studies
A major part of any area rezoning plan should be the environmental impact statement or “EIS” . Potential impacts such as traffic increases, ability to supply the site with water, sewer and power utilities are studied. Any future development’s contribution to the already over crowded school system is investigated. All of these studies were conducted for the rezoning of the downtown; none of these studies were done for the Domino Sugar site rezoning. Mr. Cavanaugh is wrong in stating that the future development will be subject to SEQRA, at least not in a comprehensive way.
When the Planning Board, granted Lead Agency by the City Council, declared that the redevelopment project did not require an EIS, it foreclosed any future environmental review. He is wrong in stating that the public will have “multiple chances to weigh in” since site plan review under Yonkers zoning does not require public hearings. The time to make sure that the “…City will undoubtedly require significant public open space…” is before the developers get set. The City should set the rules for good development at the very start of the race.
What Should have Happened
What would a complete and thoughtful study of the Domino site would have shown the City Council and the administration? It would have shown obvious issues that needed to be solved before development was allowed. Issues such as access to the north, through the existing waterfront development, is functionally impossible with that developments one-lane in each direction road with three 90 degree turns within a quarter mile before dumping traffic into an undersized access under the railroad bridge. Exiting the site to the south likewise requires accessing the rest of the city by another two-lane bridge and into another busy commercial and residential corridor.
Mr. Cavanaugh should understand the traffic impacts stemming from the proposed residential development of the Domino site as he was involved in the negotiations with Domino over the Ludlow Corridor area master plan. Domino forced the city to deal with two already congested intersections at Riverdale Avenue and Ludlow Street and a mile away at Riverdale and Prospect. And that was only to deal with several hundred trucks each day not the unknown number of cars coming from a residential site that is likely (based upon the DMX zoning and the experience at Alexander Street) to have upwards of 2,000 dwelling units.
Using the DMX zone designation at the Domino site just because it exists in the city’s zoning tool box is like reaching into your home repair kit and expecting a screwdriver to do the work of a hammer. It does not steer the good development that Mr. Cavanaugh suggests that it might. In contrast, on a site without existing streets or parceled out building sites, the DMX zone does not provide the protection or guidance that this large site needs. The DMX zone and the Downtown Master Plan purposefully did not create any additional open space because the picture of the downtown as a dense urban place was already drawn. The Domino site needs open spaces and needs a plan and zoning that takes advantage of the waterfront location and the clear site to build better than what the city has had to work with before.
Why the Rush to Rezone?
There is no need to rush to rezone this site to “let potential developers know exactly what they can build.” It is inconceivable that the site will be ready for redevelopment in the time that it would take to do the work that the city needs to achieve a really good plan. There was a time when Yonkers was overlooked by the development community because of a host of problems, not the least of which was the housing and schools’ desegregation case. During those decades several past mayoral administrations jumped at every development proposal like a drowning man grasping at a floating log. Happily, those bad days are long past, and it is time for Yonkers to stand up and demand the quality of development that serves the best interests of the city and its residents. The Downtown Master Plan set the pattern for the development that the city wanted and the developers came in to work with the city. The same should have happened at Domino.
Giving up their Oversight–City Council Members’ Vote failed the City
Redeveloping the Domino site is a once in a generation opportunity. It is a blank slate. A similar area in size and waterfront location, the Alexander Street redevelopments have been generally successful in creating housing in place of largely vacant industrial land. The city was able to require a waterfront promenade along the length of the redevelopment area but no other amenities The existing too narrow street, lack of adequate parking and not taking into account the rise of Amazon/UPS and the food and grocery delivery services lead to a congested street that is hard to navigate. We can do better at the Domino site. A Domino Sugar site area master plan and custom designed zoning could accomplish that.
Mr. Ellman holds a Masters degree in City and Regional Planning from the Rutgers University, Bloustein Graduate School of Planning and Public Policy. He led the 2000 revision of the Yonkers Zoning Ordinance bringing site plan review and increased planning quality into the land use process in Yonkers. The Downtown, South Broadway and Carpet Mills Art District special zones were projects that he oversaw implementation. He advised the Planning Board, Zoning Board of Appeals and Landmarks Preservation boards for over 30 years.
