FEBRUARY 24, 2020: A state judge has ruled that developers of a nearly completed 52-story condo tower will have to remove 20 floors of the building to comply with zoning restrictions.[1] ([link removed])

As it currently stands, the building would be the tallest on the Upper West Side. However, community groups claimed that the developer “had abused zoning rules to justify the project’s size.” Under normal rules, the developer might have been allowed to build only a 20-story building.[1] ([link removed]) [2] ([link removed])

The details are hard to follow because the zoning laws in New York City ([link removed]) are complicated. To create bigger and taller buildings, the laws allow “developers to purchase the unused development rights of adjacent buildings.”[2] ([link removed])

But opponents said this project went too far and “created a ‘gerrymandered,’ highly unusual 39-sided zoning lot.” They claimed, and a State Supreme Court ([link removed]) judge agreed, that many of the lots were only loosely connected. The judge ordered the developer to "remove all floors that exceed the zoning limit.”[2] ([link removed])

“It is exceptionally rare in New York for a developer to have to remove completed floors from a building, but it has happened,” according to the _New York Times_. “In 1991, a developer was forced to reduce a 31-story building on East 96th Street to 19 stories.”[2] ([link removed])

The developer plans to appeal and what happens next is unclear.


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_Scott Rasmussen is an editor-at-large for Ballotpedia, the Encyclopedia of American Politics. He is a senior fellow for the study of self-governance at the King’s College in New York. His most recent book, ** Politics Has Failed: America Will Not ([link removed])
** , ([link removed])
was published by the Sutherland Institute in August 2018._
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