May 29, 2009
by Thomas Curley, AIA LEED AP
To: Chairman, Zoning Board of Appeals
Re: Upper Westchester Muslim Society
DEIS Draft Scope
The intent of the SEQR Act is to measure the type and scale of negative development impacts to a community and its environment and to achieve a reasonable balance between the legitimate legislated interests of the public and the development interests of the applicant. More often than not, the magnitude of these impacts is the direct consequence of and proportional to the scale of the development proposal. It is not uncommon, therefore, for reviewing agencies to call for the inclusion of development alternatives that are smaller in scale than the applicant’s preferred proposal. In this way, the give-and-take between the applicant’s plans and the community interest can be best assessed for that balance to be struck.
The ZBA has been remiss in not calling for such an alternative. Clearly the surrounding community is extremely concerned about the scale of the applicant’s proposal. They object to the impacts of traffic, massing, activity, lighting and noise that the size of this development will deliver to their quality of life and their lifetime property investments. No one objects to this facility in principle. But they do have a right to expect that the ZBA will meet its obligations to protect their interests in shaping it to be a better fit in the community.
Further, while the specific use of this development is protected by first amendment rights, the very fact that this developer is required by law to appear as an applicant empowers and requires the ZBA act in the community interest. While first amendment precedent may not allow the ZBA to deny a religious facility application to build, nor would anyone reasonably ask them to do so, nothing prohibits the ZBA from doing its job of shaping the facility to better fit the community interests and the interests of the property owners in the neighborhood. That shaping, in this case, will not be just adjusting a site plan. Rather it may require significantly scaling back the size of the facility.
To date, the scoping discussions have focused substantially on design adjustments to the applicant’s preferred alternative, (assisted by ZBA consultants), in the interests of avoiding potential impacts and thereby rendering the applicant’s alternative more acceptable. It seems such assistance at this phase not to be in the public’s best interests. While such efforts, in the end, will need to be made to any final development proposal, they fall more properly in the following phases of EIS impacts review/mitigation and final site plan review rather than the current SEQRA scoping phase. Rather, the ZBA should be working with its consultants to bring the DEIS scope in line with SEQRA’s true intent. To this end, the ZBA should direct its consultants to help the applicant define a significantly scaled back proposal to be included as an alternative in the DEIS. In this way an alternative that comfortably fits into the neighborhood can receive fair and objective treatment in a fully comparative analysis of all of the elements of the SEQRA process (emphasis in original throughout).
Thomas Curley, AIA LEED AP
The author resides in the West End of New Castle.
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