Inwood Rezoning Opponents Take Fight To Court

INWOOD, NY — More than one year after the City Council passed a city plan to rezone a large portion on Uptown's Inwood neighborhood for greater residential and commercial density, residents are still fighting to have the proposal overturned.

Attorney Michael Sussman, representing a group called Inwood Legal Action in an article 78 lawsuit, argued in Manhattan Supreme Court Tuesday that the city's environmental review process for the "major upzoning" failed to analyze several effects of the rezoning plan on neighborhood residents. The city's environmental review for Inwood did non analyze direct and indirect displacement on longtime residents and small businesses, increased congestion on the travel of emergency vehicles, and the impact of the rezoning as it breaks down by race and ethnicity in a neighborhood that is home to a large number of working-class people of color, Sussman said in court.

The lawyer representing disgruntled Inwood residents made a second argument against the rezoning process by pointing out that the City Council voted on the project two months before the lead agency behind the project released its statement of findings on its effects.

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.

City lawyers countered the civil rights attorney by claiming there is no precedent that mandates a city environmental review from studying the impact of rezoning broken down by race, ethnicity or national origin. City lawyer Amy McCamphill also denied Sussman's claims that the rezoning's effects on displacement and transportation were not analyzed are not true and that the city is not mandated to study every single impact of a rezoning proposal.

"What the city said in court today is very simple: 'We don't want to know the impacts of this rezoning on people of color, we don't want the world to know, we don't want anybody to know. It's not of any importance to us,'" Sussman said at a rally following Tuesday morning's court hearing.

A spokesman for the city Law Department touted the rezoning as a plan that will add affordable homes to the neighborhood and include investments for area parks, schools and infrastructure.

"The City stands by the approvals it made authorizing this important initiative. We look forward to the Court’s review of the thorough record, which we strongly believe supports the City’s position in this litigation," a Law Department spokesman said in a statement.

Opponents of the rezoning plan from groups such as Inwood Legal Action, Northern Manhattan is Not 4 Sale and the MET Council on Housing echoed claims they have been making for years Tuesday, saying that the city's rezoning plan will displace longtime residents of the working-class, immigrant neighborhood that serves as one of Manhattan's last bastions for affordable living.

State Sen. Robert Jackson, who represents Inwood and filed an Amicus Brief in support of Inwood Legal Action, said Tuesday that the vast majority of neighborhood residents oppose the rezoning plan.

"Obviously we hope the judge will rule in our favor, but if not we will continue to fight," Jackson said.

The city's plan will rezone 59 blocks north of Dyckman Street to increase density and allow 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.