Ahead of this week's release of a draft of a new city of Rochester zoning map, members of Many Neighbors Building Neighborhoods sent a letter to Mayor Malik Evans asking him to put a pause on the process, because they don’t feel there’s been enough opportunity yet for community engagement.
Many Neighbors Building Neighborhoods is a coalition of neighborhood associations in the city. The map is part of an effort to align zoning in the city with the 2034 plan, that will help guide development in the city for years to come.
In the letter the group said “There continues to be significant reservations about the few/limited number of business zoning districts written into the 2034 plan AND the process of ZAP (Zoning Alignment Project) development, engagement, and implementation that has not been the ‘partnership’ noted in the approved 2034 plan.”
Dorian Hall is the vice-president of the PLEX neighborhood association and chair of Many Neighbors Building Neighborhoods. He said things like definitions of land use were not clarified before the map was made, and they are concerned Evans will move forward without including the voices of people in the neighborhoods.
“The folks who are involved in neighborhood association work, they should be the folks that he is really engaged with, because they care about neighborhoods, that's their passion," Hall said.
Hall said the upcomingin-person review meetings also present barriers for those who want to be included in the process.
“There's no hybrid meeting," Hall said, but, "A lot of the neighborhood folks do not want to go to an in-person meeting because of COVID.”
Joe Di Fiore ofCity Roots Community Land and Trust, said that in his experience there was enough public input, and he was an active participant in contributing to the 2034 plan.
He said he said he’s excited for the additional affordable housing the new zoning map would allow in the Beechwood neighborhood, but said there is still work to do in moving away from what he calls “exclusionary zoning.”
“There are a lot of barriers that zoning puts up to the production of affordable housing, which I think we've kind of settled it in favor of acknowledgment that we need more affordable housing," Di Fiore said.
