October 2, 2023

TO: Municipal Council of the City of Newark

Dear Council Members,

We are seriously alarmed about Ordinance 6F-d, which would delete and replace Newark’s Zoning and Land Use Regulations with much weaker and riskier rules for how we build our city. We are a 5-Ward Resident Task Force, convened by South Ward Environmental Alliance, that has worked hard to give residents clear information about proposed changes and ensure our voices are heard. 

After attending this summer’s 8 presentations by the Planning Department, hundreds of residents offered questions, concerns, and criticisms. We were sorely disappointed to see that revisions released in August fail to address widespread concerns about affordable housing, environmental justice, and neighborhood quality of life. We worry that the planning department’s sole focus on their own corrections and changes has overshadowed the fact that the proposed replacement ordinance still contains thousands of changes that dramatically rewrite the rules for how development happens in Newark, and threaten our goals of a healthy, affordable, and equitable city. 

In our view, from the start the Planning Department has minimized the extent and extreme nature of proposed changes and inaccurately insisted they match what residents asked for in the Newark360 process. The Planning Department has not responded or provided reasons for rejecting the great majority of public comments, except for saying they will create affordable housing. Because it’s not clear who is asking for these changes, it raises suspicion that they have been worked out by unnamed entities behind closed doors, and dictated by private interests, not public welfare.

We strongly request that the ordinance go through at least a second round of revisions to address the following 4 areas of concern before you consider it further:

1. Restore Housing Standards & Environmental Injustice Protections!
Elimination and reduction of conditions and standards for development have a negative cumulative impact on public health and quality of life. Reductions in minimum design standards for windows, permeable surfaces, and setbacks would reduce open space, add to Urban Heat Island effect, exacerbate flooding, and worsen climate resiliency. Without explaining why such changes are necessary, the replacement zoning lowers minimum standards including:

• Allows new polluting businesses near homes such as Heavy Manufacturing, Electrical and Gas Switching Facilities, Exterminator and Pesticide Businesses, and Truck, Tractor, and Trailer Parking 
• Requires fewer windows, providing less indoor light and air, although 7 out of 10 recent developments were approved without requiring a Transparency Variance
  • Requires 50% less windows on rear of houses to be 1 square foot of window per 10 feet of facade
  • Requires 30% less windows on apartment buildings front & sides, dropping the minimum from 50% to 35%
• Allows smaller yards and less space between buildings
  • Eliminates minimum lot size requirements for new buildings
  • Backyard redefined as a percentage of lot (30% of lot) instead of a specific dimension (30 feet)
• Allows more paving and run-off, exacerbating heat island effects and flooding 
  • Today a Low-Rise Multifamily Building is permitted a maximum 55% paved front yard area (usually six feet deep), and a maximum 30% paved backyard (required to be 30 feet deep) for a total of 615 sf of paving. The Replacement Ordinance permits the overall percentage of paved yard to be 80% paved, or 1440 sf of paving.

2. No New Liquor Stores, Bars, Vape Shops & Hotels in Neighborhoods! Don’t Surprise Thousands of Newark Residents By Converting Their Residential Blocks to Commercial Zones!
Expanding neighborhood areas that permit businesses like liquor stores that have often caused conflicts with neighbors will increase conflict and reduce community safety. Similarly, removing all required conditions for Bars, Lounges, Boarding Houses, Body Art Studios, Food Pantries, Animal Boarding, and 14 other currently conditional uses threatens quality of life and resident security. Finally, remapping hundreds of blocks from Residential to Commercial without individual notices will disrupt residents and fuel speculation.

• Encourages new Bars, Lounges, Tavern, Liquor Stores, Body Piercing, Tattoo Parlors, Private Clubs, Tobacco and Vape Stores, Breweries, Cigar/Hookah Bars, Boarding Houses, Hotels with up to 50 rooms, and unlicensed Homeless Shelters on neighborhood streets across the city like Springfield, Clinton, Hawthorne, Bergen, Lyons, South Orange, Sanford Ave, 18th Ave, Mt Prospect, Broadway, Bloomfield, Wilson, and Pacific.
• Removes specific protective requirements, like the condition that Boarding Houses must have state licenses and 20 rooms maximum, and that bars must have adequate ventilation systems and noise control.

3. Stop Overcrowding Our Community, Don’t Redefine Residential Zones!
Although current zoning law is already permissive and has authorized 36,000 homes since it was adopted under Mayor Baraka’s leadership, the replacement zoning multiplies the number of apartments permitted on every lot in the city in the name of increasing housing supply. Extreme increases in permitted density can destabilize housing markets and fuel predatory speculation, for example:

• 400% more apartments than currently allowed will be encouraged on land in commercial zones along streets like South Orange, Lyons, Central, and Wilson. These commercial zones will also be greatly enlarged due to proposed zoning map changes.
• In residential areas, all 3-Family Residential zones will be redefined to allow apartment buildings, all 2-Family Residential zones will be redefined to allow 3 apartments per house, and all 1-Family Zones will be redefined to allow 2 apartments per house.

This scale of development will increase stress on all of the city’s infrastructure: water, sewers, flooding, parking, traffic, and schools. Despite the Inclusionary Zoning Ordinance, it will create incentives to demolish and redevelop current rent-controlled buildings, creating a net loss of affordable housing. Increased land values due to upzoning will be captured by current land owners, creating additional financial burdens for small developers and making affordable housing more difficult to build.

4. Reinstate Public Notices & Hearings For Proposed Developments!
In the name of streamlining the development process, the proposed replacement ordinance goes too far removing resident voices from the process. Moving decisions from the Zoning Board to the Planning Board ties the City’s hands, decreasing leverage of Council members and residents to negotiate positive developments and protect against predatory ones. The proposed ordinance unbalances the system away from community interests by exempting many uses from public notices and hearings, including:

• Loosens rules so more developments qualify as Permitted Uses, which the Planning Board is required to approve 
• Without public notice, rules allows City staff or consultant to approve:
  
  • Adding additional apartments to existing buildings 
  • Change of building use without public notice or public hearing
  • 3-family conversions and new construction without public notice or public hearing

These changes won’t necessarily shorten wait times at planning and zoning boards, which we understand are largely due to outsourcing planning duties from full-time Newark civil servants to firms that also serve dozens of other towns. It is a good bet, however, that the changes will increase conflicts and litigation by curtailing the current public process to resolve development conflicts.

The items mentioned above are only iceberg tips of changes to current zoning rules included in the replacement ordinance. Many have never been explained in public presentations and deserve to be examined in the daylight, from raising minimum fence heights in residential areas to an unfriendly 6 feet, to requiring new zoning permits for simple home businesses like sewing and computer work. 

The revised ordinance currently before you would lower quality of life, roll back protections from polluting facilities, encourage new bars, liquor stores and other controversial businesses, incentivize the destruction of currently affordable housing in favor of market rates, and diminish democratic rights to guide the future of our city. Please Newark Municipal Council, hear our request for a second round of revisions with transparency so we can work together to make it better.

Thank you,

5-Ward Resident Task Force on Zoning

South  Ward Environmental Alliance