UPDATE: Rezoning for Madison, Park and Lexington Avenues in East Harlem

Hunter F. Armstrong 

The initiative to plan for East Harlem’s future and bring modernized, appropriate zoning to the neighborhood is underway. Over the course of summer and fall 2012, CIVITAS and Community Board 11 partners reached out to many neighbors to define their future needs for their community. Providing professional support to the team are Insight Associates, Ethel Sheffer, and George M. Janes Associates consultants. In the words of planner George Janes, the outreach is focused on “what East Harlem could be in the future and how zoning can be a tool to realize that vision of the future.” The average person does not speak the language of zoning, so the focus has been to identify what East Harlemites would like to see in the future of their neighborhood. Specific zoning recommendations can be drafted to implement that vision. 

Zoning development scenarios. Courtesy of Insight Associates and George M. Janes Associates. 

The focus area for the rezoning is over 60 blocks, including both sides of Madison, Park and Lexington Avenues between 115th and 132nd Streets. 125th Street was rezoned in 2008 and is not included in the current project. One of the major landmarks in this area is the Park Avenue Metro North viaduct, which casts shadows on the street below and provides a constant din of commuter trains rushing overhead. 

Much of East Harlem west of Lexington and including the study area is zoned R7-2, which encourages “tower in the park” development and a very dated vision of urban development. George Janes called this zoning “antiquated, undesirable and even anti-urban for what it does to the form of the city and it’s being changed all over the place. But this doesn’t mean that the planners in the 1950s were wrong: they simply had a different vision for the city and what was important.” 

CIVITAS and CB11 see the rezoning as a continuation of their major grassroots effort that resulted in a rezoning of many blocks east of Lexington Avenue. Approved in 2003, it was the first major rezoning of that area since the 1960s. 

To gauge community needs in the rezoning, CIVITAS and CB11 have organized roundtable discussions, committee meetings and two large community meetings in July and October at the Silberman School of Social Work at Hunter College. Incidentally, this new school building is located at Third and 119th, and was constructed in the 2003 rezoned area. 

Members of the community discussed their preferances for new zoning at an October meeting. 

Participants in community meetings have consisted of a wide range of stakeholders including block and tenants’ associations, affordable housing developers, government agencies, elected officials, churches and other non-profits, as well as many other committed, interested neighbors.

At the October 22 meeting, the land use planners presented different visions to gauge the community’s priorities. Accompanying this were zoning scenarios to implement the visions. Each plan reflected a particular bias, which included zoning modernization, economic development, housing, downzoning (limiting development to its current scale) and a hybrid scenario reflecting pieces of the other priorities. With these, meeting participants reflected on their goals and aspirations for the future of East Harlem. 

Additional public meetings and outreach are scheduled for fall and winter 2012 and an update will be in the next CIVITAS newsletter in 2013. 

This project is made possible through the support of the New York Community Trust, the William and Mary Greve Foundation and Manhattan Community Board 11. 

To learn more about East Harlem rezoning, visit: www.civitasnyc.org/east-harlem-rezoning