Clinton Beats Giuliani

Clinton community activists won a victory June 29, when a Manhattan judge invalidated a city zoning plan that would have cleared the way for massive redevelopment in the neighborhood west of Eighth Avenue.

State Supreme Court Justice William P. McCooe ruled that the city could not allow theatre owners to sell “air rights”—the right to build taller structures than normally allowed by zoning codes, by using space not taken up by low-rise buildings—above their theatres without doing an environmental-impact statement on the plan’s effect first.

Last year, the City Council changed the city’s zoning codes to allow theatre owners to sell air rights to their buildings anywhere within a 45-block area of Midtown, between Sixth and Eighth avenues and 42nd and 57th streets. Fearing that the change would spawn massive overdevelopment and displace longtime residents, many in the Clinton neighborhood strongly opposed it.

“Clinton beats Giuliani,” exulted John Fisher of the Clinton Special District Coalition, a plaintiff in the suit. The Giuliani administration may appeal the decision.

City officials argued that an environmental-impact statement was not needed for the zoning changes. They claimed that the plan would not significantly impair traffic, air quality, or neighborhood character in the area affected, because most of the over 2 million square feet of additional space it would allow built would not be developed.

Judge McCooe disagreed, saying that with Midtown booming, it “strains credibility” to predict that the zoning change would not spur intensive new construction. “In light of the immense scope of the project, which covers 17 blocks and two avenues, and considering the vast potential amount of total capacity to be added,” he wrote, “the court determines that an EIS should have been prepared.”