Variance granted for property that city messed up

From the Queens Chronicle:

Community Board 3 last Thursday overwhelmingly voted in support of a variance that would allow for a two-story home to be built at 31-41 97th St. The lot, not far from the Louis Armstrong Middle School, has been vacant since the city tore down a home at the location in 1976.

“We feel that this resolves a hardship in a unique situation, fills a lot that has been vacant for 40 years and fits with the character of the neighborhood,” said architect Arthur Yellin, who is working with the owner, Luisa Beneby, to develop the property.

Yellin said the situation is a result of the city’s decision years ago to subdivide the lot after it condemned and demolished the dilapidated structure that previously existed there. Officials sold the parcels separately and Beneby bought one of the lots in 1978.

Developing the 20-foot-wide lot has proven to be a challenge, according to Yellin. A variance is needed because the property doesn’t have enough space to include a side yard. It is also not feasible to have a driveway or garage with two parking spaces side-by-side.

“It cannot be developed in any way without a variance,” Yellin said.

Beneby has filed plans with the Buildings Department to construct a two-story, twofamily home. It would include a garage underneath the building with vehicles parked in tandem, one in front of the other. The sides of the home would be on the lot lines.

One of the conditions for the variance is that the hardship for which relief is being sought wasn’t created by the owner. The proposed home is also required to fit within the context of the neighborhood. Yellin said both requirements were satisfied.

“The situation was actually created by the city itself. The city took a legal lot and subdivided it, making it an illegal lot,” said Yellin, adding that the proposed home is “very contextual.”

Borderline crap sits undone

The St. Nicholas church-to-crap conversion is taking a while.

Everything at this corner is currently an eyesore.

Once again, all this for a supposed 3-family house.

A subdivision that should be a crime

"This is the property that is adjacent to the 4 properties developed by Tommy Huang’s son in Weeks Woodland. They’re selling it as two subdivided plots of land - one will have to destroy the house and the other will have to dig up the swimming pool? Anyway it’s such a shame it’s being sold like this!

ML# 2914967 and ML# 2914969" - anonymous

CB7 suspicious about builder's plans

From the Queens Tribune:

Attorney Michael Michnias came to speak regarding the construction of two three-story, two-family dwelling on a mapped but unbuilt portion of Ash Avenue, with the addresses 42-29 and 42-31 149th Street. The project needed to face a vote from CB 7 because it was being built on an unmapped street.

The vote to approve the project might have been relatively routine, but board members quickly expressed suspicion that the houses were intended to be used as a boarding house rather than kept as two-family units as the application stated.

In all, each two-family house would have nine bedrooms, with two on the first floor, four on the second floor, and three on the third floor. There would also be a boiler and bathroom on each floor.

For many, that was another sign that the owner had intentions to further subdivide the property. They also noted that the number of rooms was large in proportion to the size of the lots, which are 25 feet.

The final vote regarding the construction of the dwellings was 35 to zero, one abstention because of conflict of interest and zero to allow.

Subdivided units listed as rentals

From DNA Info:

The landlord of a 1920s-era Eastern Parkway building has been illegally subdividing a number of units, then turning around and listing them as rental properties, tenants say, prompting the city to slap the building with a series of stop work orders.

The Department of Buildings ordered construction to cease at 85 Eastern Parkway last month, after tenants — many of them rent-stabilized — complained that work had been underway for more than a year to split some of the building’s larger apartments into a pair of smaller units.

A spokesman for the Department of Buildings would not discuss the status of the investigation but confirmed the department had visited the site multiple times this year.

A vacate 6 years in the making

From DNA Info:

The city removed more than two-dozen people from apartments inside a home that's been cited for illegal subdivisions dating back to 2000 — an address authorities ordered to be shuttered six years ago by the Department of Buildings, officials said.

There were 27 residents from eight families — including 13 children — living inside the two-story stucco home at 33-34 103rd St. when the building was evacuated on Sept. 26 by officials from the FDNY, the DOB and the Department of Education, according to officials.

The Red Cross provided temporary shelter for the families, and P.S. 92 was also opened as a temporary shelter site, according to Red Cross and DOE officials.

A spokesman for the Department of Buildings said it was illegal for anyone to be living in the building after Feb. 25, 2009, when inspectors ordered it vacated upon finding evidence of "illegal conversion" — which can mean adding additional walls, bathrooms or other subdivisions that violate the legal occupancy rates.

The apartments were ordered vacated as they lacked a second exit and sprinklers, DOB records show.

The house has been cited 11 times since 2000 for illegal subdivisions, including turning the basement from a storage area to an apartment, adding an additional bathroom to create a third apartment on the first floor and for carving out more than four additional apartments at the house, records show.

Owners Lizz Mendoza and Ana Mena have paid a total of $35,000 in fines, according to DOB records. However, they yet were able to continue renting the place out, and in fact still had an "For Rent" sign on the building on Monday.

Broadway-Flushing Homeowners Association victorious against developer

From PaulGraziano.com:

On Wednesday, July 17th, the Broadway-Flushing Homeowners Association won an incredibly important legal victory: the Honorable Jeffrey D. Lebowitz of Supreme Court of New York State ruled in favor of the association against a developer with intentions of breaking the restrictive covenants that cover the neighborhood.

City Council candidate Paul Graziano, an urban planner and historic preservation advocate and consultant – who placed 1,330 buildings in Broadway-Flushing on the National and State Register of Historic Places in 2004 and designed the contextual rezoning for the entire neighborhood in 2009 (including the "anti-McMansion" R1-2A and R2A zones) to stop overdevelopment – had volunteered his time as an expert witness for the case, along with Mel Siegel, a past-President for the association. The lengthy decision extensively refers to Graziano's more than 3 hours of testimony on the witness stand on April 24th - as well as several other days of attending court and helping prepare the case with the Broadway-Flushing Homeowners Association's lawyer, Vincent Nicolosi, - all for no compensation of any kind.

In his decision, Judge Lebowitz specifically mentions that

"The Court found unwilling the defendant's attempts to discredit the Graziano testimony as trying to curry favor with Association members as he was presently running for City Council in a district that included the BFHA. In any event, Mr. Graziano did not testify to opinions, as much as relevant historical data."

The defendant, a developer named Xudong Siao, purchased the property at the southeast corner of 35th Avenue and 163rd Street in 2010 with the intention of tearing down the existing single-family house and subdividing the property. While the zoning in the area, R1-2A, is the strictest in New York City, it would have allowed the 120' x 100' property to be legally subdivided into two single-family houses on 60' x 100' lots. However, the Rickert-Finlay restrictive covenant which covers the area mandates that corner properties have a minimum of 80' x 100', meaning that he would need an extra 20' in order to subdivide the property to comply with the deed restriction.

The defendant's lawyer, Simon Rothkrug, attempted to argue that there were too many violations of the deed restriction over time and that they were no longer valid, nor did the Broadway-Flushing Homeowners Association have the ability to defend them. Graziano proved that, to the contrary, according to his research over 98% of the properties were still in compliance with the deed restrictions, and his argument helped to win the day.

"Along with the recent Appellate Court decision (the Dilluvio case) upholding the Broadway-Flushing Homeowners Association's right to prohibit walls and fences in front yards, Wednesday's decision reinforces the association's ability to stop all of the larger properties with frontage on the avenues from being subdivided, thereby helping to preserve the look and feel of this beautiful neighborhood" Graziano stated.

As described in the decision, "Corner lots are specifically identified...as requiring construction on larger parcels, which the Court finds was to maintain the ambiance and establish open and unobstructed views, or as Mr. Graziano testified, to create a ‘rural-like setting.’” The decision goes on to say that "The Court accepts the Plaintiff's (Broadway-Flushing's) position that the restrictions continue to serve a legitimate purpose, especially as it relates to corner lots, to allow for the continued ambiance afforded the community by open and unobstructed views. This purpose remains as compelling today as the day it was created. In fact this open air view is a substantial reason that homeowners are attracted to this area. Therefore, the Plaintiff has met their burden of showing the continued vitality of the Covenant today."

Finally, for the first time in history, Judge Lebowitz took an adversarial position - and legal opinion - against undesirable development that has been plaguing northeast Queens for over a decade: McMansions.

Judge Lebowitz stated that

"The Court takes judicial notice of the rampant development of "McMansions" (though evidence of this problem and the subsequent zoning relief can be found in the trial testimony) in the County of Queens, which were concededly built in conformity with then existing zoning laws, and which prompted a change to the present, more restrictive, R1-2A. This "McMansion" crisis was not experienced in areas covered by restrictive covenants, and underscores the continued vitality of these covenants to maintain the existing landscape of these respective neighborhoods."

"This is a game-changing decision," Graziano stated, "which should help ALL of the deed restricted communities in Queens County and beyond to defend themselves from the crass intentions of speculative developers. Their only intention is to make money for themselves regardless of the price paid by the neighborhood itself, in terms of compromising the integrity of the planned communities of our borough."

Judge Lebowitz's entire decision can be found here:

Broadway Flushing Homeowners Court Victory