Justice Sutherland asks:
whadda mean, you don't like apartments?
Check out this uncharacteristically-lengthy opinion from New York's Appellate Division (and entire 6 pages!).
In Bennett v. Troy City Council, No. CV023-0709 (Oct. 24, 2024), the court invalidated a municipal upzoning (from single-family residential to Planned Development -- which would permit apartments) because the city's conclusion that the zone change would have no significant environmental impact under New York's study-and-disclose statute.
Not content with apartments coming to the neighborhood, an adjoining owner, the "coufounder of The Friends of the Mahicantuck," sued to challenge the negative environmental declaration. Under New York's environmental study-and-disclose statute, the "environment" may include such things like historic or archaeological resources, and similar.
Zoning and rezoning is generally subject to deferential judicial review under Euclid, with the courts applying rational basis review and generally taking a hands-off approach. But this was not a Euclid-like challenge arguing that the upzoning was arbitrary and capricious. The environmental statute empowered the court to delve into the record, and determine for itself whether the city's negative declaration had a sufficient factual basis and the city had applied the required scrutiny to those facts.
Short story: it didn't:
In view of the site's significant archaeological history, and the omission of the Stockbridge-Munsee Community as a consulting party in formulating any required data retrieval plan, we find that respondent failed to take the necessary hard look at the significant environmental impact expected from the project by issuing a negative declaration.
Slip op. at 5.
The challengers also brought a spot zoning claim which the court rejected by applying the rational basis/fairly debatable test:
While the project certainly differs from the existing single-family zoning, it does maintain a residential use and would establish a multi-use trail along the shoreline opening public access to the Hudson River. The initial rejection of the proposal by the Planning Commission is relevant to this compatibility question (see Matter of Save Our Forest Action Coalition v City of Kingston, 246 AD2d 217, 221 [3d Dept 1998]), but the record was expanded by the EDP October 2021 report prior to respondent's determination. Under these circumstances, where the question of compatibility is "fairly debatable," we conclude that petitioner did not meet her burden of demonstrating that the zoning amendment constituted illegal spot zoning (Matter of Evans v City of Saratoga Springs, 202 AD3d at 1324 [internal quotation marks and citations omitted]; see Matter of Heights of Lansing, LLC v Village of Lansing, 160 AD3d 1165, 1169 [3d Dept 2018]).
Slip op. at 6.
The presence of the spot zoning claim tells us that this was not, at heart, a true environmental challenge but more NIMBYs who don't want apartments ruining the character of their neighborhood who found a way to dress up those objections in environmental clothing.
Bennett v. Troy City Council, No. CV-23-0709 (N.Y. App. Div. Oct. 24, 2024)
