This put up was authored by Amy Lavine, Esq.
A New York appellate court docket held in 2021 {that a} Jewish day faculty and summer time camp didn’t qualify for preferential zoning remedy as a non secular or instructional 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 varied 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 faculty and camp on its property and in 2014 it utilized for a constructing allow to increase its services and widen the prevailing driveway to its property. The zoning board denied its utility, nonetheless, based mostly on a willpower 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 court docket agreed with the zoning board that the JCC’s use of its property didn’t qualify as both a non secular or instructional use that will be entitled to deferential zoning remedy. The court docket first defined that regardless that “the JCC is a non secular group, the proof offered to the ZBA helps its willpower that the actions and applications provided on the Day Faculty and Camp are commonplace leisure actions which are provided at any summer time camp.” The court docket equally discovered that the JCC’s use of the property was leisure, slightly than tutorial in nature. Because it noticed, “the proof within the report established that the camp is operated below a kids’s camp allow issued by the Nassau County Division of Well being, and the actions provided are predominantly athletic and leisure in nature, eg, sports activities, swimming, horseback driving , and diving. Additional, no proof was offered to display that the employees employed by the camp are certified to instruct in topics that are a part of an everyday faculty curriculum.” The court docket additionally upheld the zoning board’s willpower that the JCC’s proposed use can be detrimental to the neighborhood. Because the court docket defined, this discovering was supported by “particular, detailed testimony” from adjoining property homeowners that was based mostly on their “private information,” and this it was not solely based mostly on “subjective concerns resembling basic neighborhood 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 2nd Dept 3/3/21).