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BRIARWOOD, NY (March 28, 2008) -- Councilman James F. Gennaro (D-Fresh Meadows) gathered with Briarwood residents, including members of the Briarwood Community Association, to discuss and celebrate a recent downzoning they all championed that will save many area private homes from being converted into large apartment buildings.
"Briarwood has always cherished the charming private homes of its rolling streets and thanks to this downzoning, many of these homes won't be razed to make way for tall apartment buildings," said Councilman Gennaro, who is working to preserve the residential character of neighborhoods all over his eastern Queens City Council district. "I commend the Department of City Planning, Sey Schwartz and the Briarwood Community Association for working with me to preserve Briarwood's character."
The Briarwood downzoning affects 39 blocks in the neighborhood, roughly bounded by Parsons Boulevard, Queens Boulevard, the Van Wyck Expressway, Hillside Avenue and the Grand Central Parkway. In its most dramatic areas, the downzoning will turn R6A zones, which allows 70 foot tall, seven-story apartment buildings with no surrounding yards into R4 zones, which only allow 35 foot tall single- and two-family homes with 24 foot tall streetfaces. These are typically two-story homes.
Briarwood Community Association President Seymour Schwartz lives on the section of Pershing Crescent that was just downzoned from R6A to R4B. His and the 51 other two-story attached private homes on his block are now protected from ever becoming seven-story apartment buildings like the ones that surround his house.
"This is a major step forward for the controlled growth of the Briarwood community and for the contextual zoning that would protect our community from out-of-context, uncontrolled construction," said Mr. Schwartz, the driving community force behind the current downzoning. "Our community publicly acknowledges the support of Councilman Gennaro in achieving this victory, and we thank him."
In other sections of Briarwood, R6A zones will now be R5D, which allow 40 foot tall buildings, making for a reduction of three stories.
The current downzoning repairs inadequacies in a 1996 rezoning that did not fully take the neighborhood's low-rise residential character into consideration. The current downzoning follows a similar contextual rezone of neighboring Jamaica Hill, which Councilman Gennaro also championed, in 2006.
Full details of the Briarwood downzoning, including a map and full definitions of the prior and current zones, are available on the Department of City Planning Web site at www.nyc.gov/dcp. |
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