After a brief moratorium on residential development and deliberations between town officials and an outside planning consultant, residents will soon get their chance to provide input on a new set of site plan laws.
At a recent Town Council meeting, the council announced that an official draft of the town’s revised site plan law—meant to shift the parameters of allowable development in residential areas—will go to public hearing on May 18.
Town Supervisor Nancy Seligson, a Democrat, said, “It’s been a good process in the sense that we learned a lot. Even when you think something is going to be fairly simple; when it comes to changing municipal law it becomes more complicated.”
The newly revised law is a product of a three-month moratorium on townwide residential development passed in December 2015.
According to Town Administrator Steve Altieri, the purpose of hitting the pause button was to steer the town’s site plan laws in a direction that fits the nature and volume of development.
“There’s a new wave of larger homes being built,” he said. “There is probably now a need for a review of the larger construction projects.”
The current draft of the site plan law, according to Altieri, is meant to only hone in on those developments that the town board and residents feel are pushing the boundaries of Mamaroneck’s planning laws.
A number of the draft law’s provisions are meant to reel back what the town views as a recent acceleration of large-scale developments.
Among the provisions, Altieri explained, is a new Planning Board review process that would be triggered by certain variables of a project, including plans that require demolishing more than 70 percent of a home, homes being built on vacant lots, and site grading that exceeds 45 percent of the property.
Although the moratorium helped to give the town board time to mull over current zoning laws, Seligson said she’s aware that there are still major issues that residents feel have been unaddressed.
“This particular law does not address floor area ratio,” she said. “[Residents] would like there to be more control over teardowns and what can be built.”
Seligson added that, as a part of zoning discussions going forward, the town will be looking at concerns over floor area ratio and any other loose ends.
Currently, Larchmont is also in the midst of re-evaluating its zoning laws after passing a six-month villagewide moratorium on residential development in January.
Similar to the town of Mamaroneck’s moratorium, Larchmont village officials continue to deliberate new zoning laws meant to scale back what residents and village board members view as a trend of unchecked development.
Since the passage of the moratorium, however, the village has faced the threat of multiple lawsuits after developers blocked by the moratorium were denied by the village board in an appeal.
A particularly divisive project that aims to tear down an iconic home, located on Larchmont’s 40 Ocean Ave., has been at the center of this issue after a firm associated with the project filed the beginning stages of a formal lawsuit.
Public hearings for the town of Mamaroneck’s site plan laws will begin during the next town board meeting and according to Seligson, depending on comments from residents.
