292 Bedford LLC v. City of New York

The New York Appellate Division affirmed the dismissal for lack of standing of a property owner’s lawsuit challenging the New York City Planning Commission and New York City Council’s approval of Zoning Map and Zoning Resolution amendments and special use permits for development of a waterfront property in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn. The appellate court found that the petitioner’s property was “too far a distance”—0.4 miles—from the project site to allow a presumption of injury-in-fact and that the property owner offered nothing more than “merely conclusory and speculative allegations” that it would suffer a cognizable injury different in kind or degree from that of the public at large. The property owner had alleged that it was likely to be affected by the development’s environmental impacts, including impacts on “flooding or overflow during storms.” The owner argued “that by building the Project partly in and adjoining the East River, Respondents are endangering extensive adjoining areas—much further than 2,000 feet—with flooding due to storms and sea level rise.” The property owner’s claims included that the City failed to take a hard look at the project’s impacts as required by the State Environmental Quality Review Act, including climate resiliency issues such as sea level rise. The owner had alleged that “[i]n the absence of a hard look under applicable regulations incorporating climate change, sea level rise and the increasing frequency of 100-year storms into the New York City Code, the Project should not be permitted to proceed.”