This publish was authored by Amy Lavine, Esq.
A New York appellate courtroom held in 2021 {that a} Jewish day college and summer time camp didn’t qualify for preferential zoning remedy as a non secular or academic use.
The petitioner, Sid Jacobson Jewish Neighborhood Middle, owned property within the Village of Brookville in an R-5 zoning district. Along with indifferent single-family dwellings, the R-5 district additionally allowed numerous conditional makes use of, together with “nonresidential makes use of which will not be excluded pursuant to the state and federal legal guidelines.” The JCC operated a day college and camp on its property and in 2014 it utilized for a constructing allow to broaden its amenities and widen the prevailing driveway to its property. The zoning board denied its utility, nonetheless, primarily based on a dedication that the JCC’s use of the property was not a conditional use permitted within the R-5 district and that the proposed use can be detrimental to the neighborhood.
The courtroom agreed with the zoning board that the JCC’s use of its property didn’t qualify as both a non secular or academic use that will be entitled to deferential zoning remedy. The courtroom first defined that regardless that “the JCC is a non secular group, the proof introduced to the ZBA helps its dedication that the actions and applications supplied on the Day Faculty and Camp are commonplace leisure actions which are supplied at any summer time camp.” The courtroom equally discovered that the JCC’s use of the property was leisure, reasonably than educational in nature. Because it noticed, “the proof within the document established that the camp is operated beneath a youngsters’s camp allow issued by the Nassau County Division of Well being, and the actions supplied are predominantly athletic and leisure in nature, eg, sports activities, swimming, horseback driving , and diving. Additional, no proof was introduced to display that the workers employed by the camp are certified to instruct in topics that are a part of an everyday college curriculum.” The courtroom additionally upheld the zoning board’s dedication that the JCC’s proposed use can be detrimental to the neighborhood. Because the courtroom defined, this discovering was supported by “particular, detailed testimony” from adjoining property homeowners that was primarily based on their “private information,” and this it was not solely primarily based on “subjective concerns akin to normal group opposition.”
Matter of Sid Jacobson Jewish Neighborhood Ctr., Inc. v Zoning Bd. of Appeals of the Inc. villa. of Brookville, 192 AD3d 693 (NY App Div second Dept 3/3/21).
