City Releases Zoning Proposals to Support Business Development

The Department of City Planning (DCP) unveiled its initial proposals for the City of Yes for Economic Opportunity zoning package on June 13. The goals of this package are to foster job growth and small-business success by making the zoning regulations applicable to businesses more flexible. The package has 18 recommendations, organized around four principles: (1) to allow more businesses to locate near their customers; (2) to support commercial and industrial growth; (3) to foster vibrant neighborhoods; and (4) to give businesses more certainty and predictability. Its major zoning recommendations include the following:

• Allowing life science businesses to occupy office space, subject to environmental standards
• Removing prohibitions on dancing, comedy and musical acts in venues with maximum occupancy of fewer than 200 people
• Allowing larger-scale (up to 10,000 square feet) indoor amusements in neighborhood commercial districts (C1/C2) and those at an even larger scale in denser commercial areas
• Expanding opportunities to locate clean, small-scale production businesses in commercially zoned areas
• Allowing higher-density loft-style buildings and right-sizing parking and loading requirements in job-intensive industrial areas
• Removing the two-year discontinuance limitation on restoring nonconforming retail uses in residence districts
• Relaxing size limitations on home occupations and expanding the types of occupations allowed
• Allowing wholesale and storage businesses in small ground-floor spaces in neighborhood commercial districts, and in larger ground-floor spaces in high-density commercial areas
• Removing the loading requirement for a change of use in existing buildings

The full list of recommendations can be found here.

DCP anticipates that the package’s approximately six-month public review process will begin around mid-October. We will be monitoring this proposal and providing updates, including on the proposed zoning text once it is released.