Courtesy of follower Kate McVey:
- A developer has agreed to rip the top 12 floors off an Upper East Side apartment tower that was built too tall for New York City’s zoning rules, a dramatic stroke that would bring the unoccupied structure into compliance with the law — five years after it was built.
- Neither the builders nor opponents of the project could recall so drastic a penalty for a zoning violation.
- “Our goal has been to insure that the Zoning Resolution is strictly enforced,” said Genie Rice, president of Civitas, “and that zoning violations be remedied by zoning compliance.”
- In March 1989, the board unanimously refused the request [to let the error stand], saying that “the practical difficulty or unnecessary hardship claimed as a ground for the variance was self-created,” in that “reasonable diligence would have uncovered, for a good-faith inquirer, the existence of the eastern boundary” of the applicable zoning district.
A Zoning Board with . . . ballz.