Inwood Rezoning Opponents Renew Call For Racial Impact Study

INWOOD, NY — A group of activists suing the city to overturn a 2018 rezoning of Inwood renewed their call Wednesday for a study on the rezoning's potential to displace residents by race.

Inwood Legal Action stood with officials such as Public Advocate Jumaane Williams and City Councilman Salamanca on the steps of City Hall to support a bill introduced by Williams in May that would require the city to conduct "racial impact studies" for any land use action that requires an environmental review.

Willaims described the legislation as a "no brainer" Wednesday, saying that the city's rezonings of neighborhoods such as Inwood, East Harlem and East New York will have an outsized impact on residents of color.

Salamanca, who chairs the council's land use committee, said that he's working to have a committee hearing on the legislation soon. The Bronx councilmember said his district is currently in the midst of a rezoning study for Southern Boulevard. While it's too early for him to support or oppose the rezoning, any plan that doesn't include a racial impact study is "dead on arrival," Salamanca said Wednesday.

Inwood Legal Action filed an Article 78 lawsuit against the city earlier this year, and based its legal argument around the city's lack of a racial impact study. Attorney Michael Sussman argued in August that the city's existing environmental review process for land use actions fails to address the impact projects will have on residents by race and ethnicity.

Sussman asked Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Verna Saunders to overturn the City Council's August 2018 approval of the rezoning on the basis that the process behind the city's environmental review, not the results of the study, was improper and arbitrary.

"A mandatory racial impact analysis will promote inclusivity and reduce segregation in City neighborhoods, prevent litigation between communities and the City, and inject more of the community’s voice in the City’s environmental review process," Cheryl Pahaham, co-chair of Inwood Legal Action said in a statement.

The city's Inwood rezoning plan affects 59 blocks north of Dyckman Street. The rezoning increases density and allows for greater residential and commercial development along 10th Avenue and in the largely industrial areas east of 10th Avenue. The blocks west of 10th Avenue are being rezoned in an effort to preserve the neighborhood's current residential character by implementing R7A zoning — a mid-density rezoning that caps building heights.

Read more about the rezoning plan here.

Patch's Kathleen Culliton Contributed to this report.