Commission sets new rules for Fieldston landmarks

Anyone wishing to change a building in the Fieldston Historic District must apply to the Landmarks Preservation Commission for a permit. New rules may make the process easier.

By N. Clark Judd

Correction appended

More than two years and 64 permits later, the Fieldston Historic District is about to get a long-awaited set of rules making it easier for property owners to work on their homes.

The Landmarks Preservation Commission will release a draft of the rules in July, in advance of a public hearing on the subject, said commission spokeswoman Lisi de Bourbon. The commission previously discussed the rules with the Fieldston Property Owners' Association and other community leaders, and is implementing them at the request of Community Board 8.

"The commission always imagined that there would be rules that are tailored to the homes in Fieldston because our existing rules apply to rowhouses and brownstones, which comprise the majority of the building stock within the city's 91 historic districts," Ms. de Bourbon wrote in an emailed statement. "We've issued rules in the past for certain historics, such as the Douglaston Historic District in Queens (designated in 1997) because of the unique building types there."

Like Fieldston, Douglaston, which overlooks Little Neck Bay, is home to a wide variety of architectural styles from Arts and Crafts to Colonial, Tudor and Mediterranean.

Board 8 land use committee chairman, Charles Moerdler, a critic of the Landmarks Commission, explained that the rules would, in effect, create a list of things an owner is automatically allowed to do on their property, as with zoning regulations.

"They are intended to provide a safety valve," said Mr. Moerdler. "Instead of people having to wait for days and weeks and months for some bureaucrat in the Landmarks Commission to go over the plans and say, 'Yes, you may paint your house yellow and not white' … that there are standards that say, 'Parrot yellow or what have you is okay, but putrid yellow is no good.'"

Currently, anyone wishing to change one of the 257 buildings in the Fieldston Historic District in any substantive way must apply to Landmarks. Of the several dozen permits issued in the past two years, the vast majority were for minor work, according to data provided by the commission. Only two new buildings, at 4506 Greystone Ave. in 2006 and 4550 Livingston Ave. in 2007, were applied for.

Only five times in the district's two-year history did a homeowner come before the full commission for what's called a Certificate of Appropriateness. All the other permits were handled by Commission staff.

Mr. Moerdler was disdainful of the process homeowners of landmarked homes must go through, and former Board 8 Chairman Tony Cassino, who claims a share of the credit for the creation of the district, didn't spring to its defense.

"I support landmarking," he said. "I don't support bureaucracy."

Michael Goldblum, an architect who frequently works on projects in Fieldston, says the Landmarks Commission doesn't deserve a bum rap.

"It's somewhat unfair to isolate the Landmarks experience in Fieldston or in Riverdale's district, for that matter, because it's suggesting that if it weren't for Landmarks, everything would be hunky dory, because it's not," he said. "Natural Area regulations are much more arduous and time consuming than Landmarks'."

Dealing with the Landmarks Commission, he said, can add anywhere from two to four months to complete a project, depending on the complexity of the homeowner's plans.

The Special Natural Area District rules - which apply to much of Riverdale, and require a consultation with the Department of City Planning before modifying the terrain in any way, including trees and rock outcroppings - add four to eight months to a project, he said.

"Landmarks will not review a project, if it's a Natural Area project, until they know it's generally on track to being approved by City Planning," Mr. Goldblum explained.

When Pamela Hort and David Paskin decided to update the kitchen in their College Road home, their plans called for minimal exterior changes and no disturbance of the landscape. Normally, they would have had to have every tree and rock on their property professionally inventoried for SNAD approval before the Landmarks Commission would even look at their plans. However, after a review of the plans, City Planning decided to waive that requirement.

As a rule, Landmarks sets conditions that must be met before approving applications rather than rejecting them if they're not up to par, said Ms. de Bourbon. When they encounter homeowners who are in violation, they ask that property owner to apply to the commission to legalize the changes they made to their property.

Though the anticipated district rules are expected to ease the paths of homeowners through the Landmarks Commission's bureaucracy, enforcement remains a touchy subject.

Mr. Moerdler and Mr. Cassino agree that the commission is heavily reliant upon residents to notify them when homeowners are in violation of the historic district's rules.

But since 2006, when the historic district was created, there have been few violations. In fact, the recent episode at 4662 Grosvenor Ave. - in which the homeowner, Hysen Mehmetaj, says his contractor took out windows without his knowledge - is, by Mr. Moerdler's and former Board 8 Chairman Tony Cassino's reckoning, the only time in which a homeowner has been caught red-handed with a home out of compliance with the rules.

Not approving Mr. Mehmetaj's application, Mr. Moerdler said at Board 8's last meeting, would put the community at risk of suffering "an eyesore there for forever and three days."

The board voted to recommend that Landmarks approve Mr. Mehmetaj's application to complete the work, but also urged the commission to impose some sort of sanction against him for violating Landmarks law.

In the print edition, this article incorrectly stated that Pamela Hort and David Paskin had to have every tree and rock on their property professionally inventoried before they could begin work on their kitchen. They avoided that requirement after a review of their plans by the Department of City Planning.

This is part of the June 19, 2008 online edition of The Riverdale Press.

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