Agenda - Planning Commission - 07/12/2018

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a e Zoning relief enabled the elevation of the historic building stock in coastal New York City neighborhoods after Hurricane Sandy. Code amendments currently under review seek to mitigate the downsides of elevation. Base Flood Elevation maps, and would also be required to purchase flood insurance (at rising actuarial rates) for these new eleva- tions. Local DCP planning staff then engaged in wide-ranging assessments and public engagement processes in these communities to develop specific, actionable amendments the city's zoning code and map. Additional local recommendations would also be fed into a large Citywide Flood Resilient Text Amend- ment, which would apply to flood -prone neighborhoods throughout the city. The effort is notable in that many of the coastal communities impacted by Sandy bear a more than passing resemblance to other coastal communities throughout the nation. The East Shore of Staten Island, Gerritsen Beach, Howard Beach, Sheeps- head Bay, and the Rockaways all feature smaller -scale single- and two-family resi- dences (including a large proportion of historic beach bungalows), and neighbor- hood retail, much of it based on late-19th and early-zoth century settlement and development patterns. These communities, much like other coastal communities nation- wide, have significant historic connections with the water, particularly around tourism, recreation, and shipping. Consequently, this means exposure to coastal inundation and sea -level rise with limited adaptive capacity. The East Shore of Staten Island, where I worked as a community planner as part of the Resilient Neighborhoods Initiative, is a convenient case study for wider zoning and land -use applicability. My former plan- ning director would often remark that Staten Island is more like the rest of the country than the rest of New York City, a sentiment that rings particularly true on the topic of coastal flood adaptation. The East Shore was hit particularly hard by Sandy, with coastal inundation up to a mite inland, and thousands of significantly damaged or destroyed homes and businesses. These impacts transformed the community into something of a hub of federal, state, and local government activity, with federally sponsored seawall construc- tion, state -sponsored property buyouts, and city reconstruction and elevation efforts all under way concurrently. In this environment, DCP sought to develop a series of locally cali- brated zoning recommendations tailored to this post -Sandy environment. Zoning for long-term retreat formed the core of these recommendations. Several neighborhoods along the East Shore that suffered near -total housing tosses due to their proximity to the water and extremely low elevation had elected to participate in a large-scale federally funded (and state - administered) voluntary property buyout program following the storm. Although the program was notable for its high participation rate, it also led to some significant issues. Any property purchased by the state would need to remain as open space in perpetu- ity, but what would happen to those home owners who elected not to participate? What about vacant land in these buyout areas with development potential? What would the zon- ing permit property owners to build in an area that both the state and federal government consider too high risk for long-term develop- ment? How would the city supply services to a dwindling population? What would this patch- work of open space, new development, and property holdouts took like? To begin answering these questions, DCP created the East Shore Special Coastal Risk District, a map and code revision spe- cifically tailored to the boundaries of the local property buyout areas and with the intent of only permitting contextual develop- ment and incentivizing longterm coastal retreat (§137). Generally, the overlay applies more intense planning commission scrutiny to any future development, reduces per- mitted development from two-family and attached structures to only single-family detached, modifies existing bulk regula- tions to increase wetland buffers, and eases regulatory burdens on home elevation and rebuilding for those few home owners who choose to stay. Lessons learned on Staten Island's East Shore fed directly into New York's work on their Citywide Flood Resilient Text Amend- ment, a measure meant to allow for and mitigate the impacts of flood -resilient con- struction. While the text amendment is not yet final, proposed changes are undergoing vetting through a comprehensive citywide public engagement process. Proposed changes from DCP include: • Allowing property owners to reallocate lost floor area from the ground floor and sub - grade spaces elsewhere in the structure • Reducing required side or rear yards rela- tive to overall height to allow squatter and more proportional residential buildings • Enacting new height limits where pos- sible that are based on the new local Design Flood Elevation (one to two feet over the Base Flood Elevation) where side- and rear -yard relief is possible • Permit relief from height limits, where possible, for developers and property owners who wish to go above the Design Flood Elevation • Require design interventions to screen and mitigate elevation impacts on the local streetscape ZONINGPRACTICE 6.18 AMERICAN PLANNING ASSOCIATION I page 6