In Long-Awaited SoHo & NoHo Planning Study, City Calls For Affordable Housing And Expanding Retail

A city planning report that attracted suspicion from many SoHo and NoHo residents has finally been released, boasting a list of recommendations that include the promotion of affordable housing in the notoriously pricey neighborhoods and the legalization of more ground floor retail.

The 85-page study, which was commissioned by Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer, City Council Member Margaret Chin, and the Department of City Planning, is expected to form the basis of the first comprehensive rezoning of SoHo and NoHo in decades. Originally set to be released by the end of the summer, the plan has been anxiously anticipated by a wide range of interests, from residents and loft artists to commercial property owners and housing advocates. As part of the process, city officials organized five public meetings around the future of the two neighborhoods beginning in February.

Despite being a retail mecca, SoHo and NoHo, which together contain some of the New York City's priciest real estate, is treated under zoning as a manufacturing area. Retailers are currently banned from occupying spaces larger than 10,000 square feet. But over the years, oversized retail has managed to slip in, either through loopholes or by special permit, which requires a long approval process that Brewer had criticized for being laborious for city officials.

During meetings, residents pushed back on a rezoning, worried about the area's over-commercialization. Longtime loft artists, in particular, voiced concerns about landlords trying to use a rezoning to jeopardize their legal status.

In the end, the report calls for protecting existing artists while also trying to encourage more artists, including so-called "makers," who often rely on technology, to qualify for artist certification (although it advises further study to examine how to implement those changes through zoning.)

In its most direct recommendation, the study says the city should revise the zoning around SoHo and NoHo to allow for a broader array of retail, such as food stores and including community facilities, arts and cultural spaces. But it also maintains that the cap on ground floor retail should remain at 10,000 square feet.

Sean Sweeney, the director of SoHo Alliance, a neighborhood civic association, said that while he was relieved that the city did not expand the size of as-of-right ground floor retail, he said he wanted to ensure that the same standard would be held to floors above the ground level as well as cellar spaces.

"We just don’t want to have mega stores or department stores in our neighborhood," he said.

Sweeney said that while he had yet to finish reading the report, he had already received feedback from residents who called the recommendations too vague.

Property owners who formed a group called the Fix SoHo NoHo coalition to lobby around the rezoning, applauded the report's retail recommendation. In a press release, a spokesperson said, "SoHo/NoHo should be recognized as a special mixed-use district because that is what it is today, as the report directly says. The majority of residents and workers in SoHo and NoHo support the zoning finally matching reality." 

But the coalition reiterated its objections to loft artists, saying that "legal residency should not be reserved to a select legacy group."

The other notable recommendation involved the development of affordable housing by calling on the city to "explore opportunities for increased density, where appropriate."

The inclusion of housing as a priority was taken as a victory by Open New York, a self-proclaimed YIMBY ("yes in my backyard") group that attended many of the meetings and has made a case for what it sees as underutilized sites in SoHo and NoHo.

"When we started the process, housing was clearly not a priority," said Will Thomas, a board member of Open New York.

He added: "Just the fact that they are talking about it is a step in the right direction."

Andrew Berman, the director of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation who had criticized the process for not including his organization in an advisory group, issued a statement calling the report "pretty broad and vague" and questioning whether a plan for more housing would come at the expense of the neighborhood's historic character. 

"The real test," he said, "will be which of these recommendations will the City seek to move forward with, and how will they interpret these relatively amorphous and inoffensive sounding 'recommendations' and principles."