Inwood Group Appeals Rezoning Decision To NY'S Highest Court

INWOOD, NY — The Inwood Legal Action advocacy group announced Thursday it is filing an appeal to New York's highest court to fight last week's decision to continue with the Inwood rezoning plan.

The group will file a motion to the New York Court of Appeals requesting permission to appeal a decision by the Appellate Court of New York, which reversed an earlier ruling halting the 2018 Inwood rezoning plan.

Members of the Inwood Legal Action group voted unanimously to file the motion on behalf of Northern Manhattan Is Not For Sale and other petitioners within the community.

The First Department Appellate Court of New York's ruling came after a lower court sided with opponents of Mayor Bill de Blasio's administrating rezoning plan in December, finding that the city failed to "take a hard look" at the potential impacts of the plan.

The demand for a racial impact analysis of the rezoning, along with other studies, was at the center of the advocacy's group first legal challenge.

"The Inwood rezoning will displace Dominican, Black, Asian, and other Latino residents and small business owners, and we believe the City should examine the racial impact of the Inwood rezoning, though it refused," Inwood Legal Action Co-Chair, Cheryl Pahaham said in a news release. "We believe federal fair housing law requires the City to do so, despite its refusal."

The Appellate Court, which sided against the Inwood advocacy group last week, wrote that they understood the petitioner's desire for New York City to explore the potential impacts on racial and ethnic groups.

However, "the City was not required to perform analysis aimed at forecasting the mix of ethnicities expected to occupy units in the development, and the corresponding impact," the court wrote in its decision.

The rezoning plan proposes upzoning large areas of Inwood east of 10th Avenue to facilitate large-scale residential developments while rezoning areas west of 10th Avenue in an attempt to preserve the existing neighborhood's characters.

The decision is now heading to the New York Court of Appeals, which is the state's highest court.