The clock was nearing midnight at Tuesday’s marathon Hoboken Planning Board meeting when City Planner Elizabeth Vandor presented a report that found that a citizen-written ordinance is “inconsistent with the city’s master plan.”
The ordinance was authored by a group of the city’s residents known as the Historic Hudson Street Coalition, who paid for a planner and a lawyer out of their own pockets to help try to change the zoning laws of the sub-district that houses the Stevens Institute of Technology campus.
Councilman Tony Soares sponsored the ordinance and it passed by a 9-0 margin for an introduction and first reading at the May 16 City Council meeting.
After a planning ordinance is introduced, the City Council must send the ordinance to the Planning Board. They then receive a report from the city planner that determines whether the ordinance is consistent with local laws. City Planner Vandor presented the Planning Board with her report Tuesday and said that she found that the ordinance did not conform.
A paradox
The HHSC has been racing against the clock to get their amendment adopted because they are opposing a proposed parking garage/athletic field upgrade designed by Stevens for the corner of Eighth and Hudson Streets (see sidebar, p. 12). If they can make zoning laws stricter in that area, it will be harder for the Planning Board to pass the Stevens garage.
But even a disapproving report from the city’s planner does not spell death for the ordinance.
At this point, the City Council has three options. They could pass the ordinance as it is and disregard the planner’s recommendation. They could revise the ordinance, taking into account the planner’s recommendations. The council would have to then introduce a new ordinance, which would have to be returned to the Planning Board for an new report from the planner. Their third option is to vote down the ordinance.
The ordinance will be on the agenda at this Wednesday’s City Council meeting.
Why it is inconsistent?
In a four-page report, Vandor described in detail why aspects of the zoning amendment do not conform to the city’s master plan. “The parking proposals are inconsistent with the master plan,” she wrote. “I strongly suggest that a targeted study precede any increase in parking requirements for the R-1(E) [Stevens] district. Otherwise it appears arbitrary.”
As is, the ordinance would dramatically increase the amount of parking spaces that a new development project would need.
“I don’t know where the new standards have come from or what their justification is,” Vandor added in the report. “I would point out that the proposed requirement for places of assembly is far more burdensome than one the one listed in the Hoboken zoning ordinance.”
The report added that the proposal is in direct conflict with the city’s master plan because the ordinance prohibits shared parking, a practice that the city encourages. Time-shared parking is where developers can use the same parking space to satisfy a parking requirement as long as the buildings have different time characteristics. If passed, every use (i.e. dorm room, auditorium, and office space) will have to provide spaces separately and can not share spaces.
The HHSC disagrees with Vandor’s findings and will continue to lobby the City Council to adopt the original ordinance at the next council meeting.
“The issue here is whether or not this meets the criteria of the master plan,” said HHSC founder and community activist Beth Mason. “We truly believe that the ordinance does not discourage Stevens from space sharing and since that is her only real objection we feel that it is only right to push on.”
Other recommendations
While the parking aspect is the only one Vandor found to be in direct contrast to the master plan, she did make several recommendations she believes would strengthen and improve the ordinance.
The proposed ordinance states that all future lighted athletic fields, auditoriums with more than 100 seats, parking facilities, hospitals and health clinics and physical plant buildings should not be within 100 feet of any residential home. If the ordinance passes, Stevens will be required to gain a variance for any of these uses. Also included are new requirements for distances between buildings. Additionally, building height regulations were modified so that there would be a 40-foot maximum within 200 feet of a residential zone, and 100-foot height limit elsewhere within the sub-district.
Furthermore, the ordinance clarifies added requirements for facades within 100 feet of residential zone. These requirements include making any new buildings “sympathetic to and compatible with the adjacent neighborhood.”
Even though the report focuses on the increased parking requirements, Vandor was personally against, in general, the banning of auditoriums, athletic fields, and the other aforementioned types of facilities from within 100 feet of a residential home. She did say that the other conditions in the ordinance for height and facades should remain. She said, “In the zone [100 foot buffer area], height would be defined the same way as in the adjacent R-1 residential district [40 feet], the fa