After losing an appeal, the developer of the Teddy Place luxury homes at 3250 Rawlins Avenue in the Bronx was forced to raze two of the five houses nearing completion, so that he could proceed with marketing the remaining Country Club properties, according to an article in day at nypost.com by Patrick Rocchio and Bill Weisbrod.
The project's architect, Gerald Caliendo, and the developer, 3250 Rawlins Avenue Partners, had filed a self-certification application with the city's Department of Buildings to erect the single-family homes in a cluster around a private street named Teddy Place and to have the complex treated as one house, the article said.
"Upon DOB review, an egregious mistake was discovered. The homes were both too close to one another and set too far back from the street to meet" R-2 zoning regulations for the site, the article continued.
Construction of the homes began in 2007 on a 125-foot-wide parcel that had been occupied by a mansion belonging to the owner of the Finkle Umbrella Company on Brush Avenue but construction was hit with stop work orders the next year when the brick houses were about 90 percent complete, the article said.
"The size of the front and side yards of each house did not meet the minimum requirements for a private roadway. The minimums range from 20 percent for narrow lots up to 20 feet wide, to 50 percent for frontage of 60 feet. To build an access driveway the homes could not be more than 100 feet from Rawlins Avenue. By leveling the two homes furthest from the street, the development will now qualify for driveway access," the article said.
The article said that City Councilman Jimmy Vacca said he thought "what we had here was someone who didn't understand the local zoning and who took a chance and got stuck."
"Our neighborhood has worked very hard to stop the kind of over development that we had here, and I hope this sends a message that no one should try to skirt our local zoning. Most importantly, hopefully soon the residents of Rawlins Avenue will no longer have to look at a construction site every day and we can now see this project move," he said.
The project's architect, Gerald Caliendo, and the developer, 3250 Rawlins Avenue Partners, had filed a self-certification application with the city's Department of Buildings to erect the single-family homes in a cluster around a private street named Teddy Place and to have the complex treated as one house, the article said.
"Upon DOB review, an egregious mistake was discovered. The homes were both too close to one another and set too far back from the street to meet" R-2 zoning regulations for the site, the article continued.
Construction of the homes began in 2007 on a 125-foot-wide parcel that had been occupied by a mansion belonging to the owner of the Finkle Umbrella Company on Brush Avenue but construction was hit with stop work orders the next year when the brick houses were about 90 percent complete, the article said.
"The size of the front and side yards of each house did not meet the minimum requirements for a private roadway. The minimums range from 20 percent for narrow lots up to 20 feet wide, to 50 percent for frontage of 60 feet. To build an access driveway the homes could not be more than 100 feet from Rawlins Avenue. By leveling the two homes furthest from the street, the development will now qualify for driveway access," the article said.
The article said that City Councilman Jimmy Vacca said he thought "what we had here was someone who didn't understand the local zoning and who took a chance and got stuck."
"Our neighborhood has worked very hard to stop the kind of over development that we had here, and I hope this sends a message that no one should try to skirt our local zoning. Most importantly, hopefully soon the residents of Rawlins Avenue will no longer have to look at a construction site every day and we can now see this project move," he said.
Architecture Critic
Carter Horsley
Since 1997, Carter B. Horsley has been the editorial director of CityRealty. He began his journalistic career at The New York Times in 1961 where he spent 26 years as a reporter specializing in real estate & architectural news. In 1987, he became the architecture critic and real estate editor of The New York Post.
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