Seward Park Planning Process – EIS and Urban Design

In response to the Committee’s request to better understand what is needed at the beginning of the environmental review process and how urban design fits in at this stage, the following documents related to the East 125th Street Development Project may be useful:

1) Final Scope of Work for the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS);
2) Project Description Chapter of Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS).

In addition, the entire FEIS may be found here: http://search1.nyc.gov/search?output=xml_no_dtd&site=default_collection&proxystylesheet=agency_frontend&client=agency_frontend&sitesearch=www.nyc.gov%2Fhtml%2Foec&q=125&go.x=12&go.y=9.

For that project, the Public Scoping Meeting was held on July 19, 2007 and the FEIS was issued in August 2008 toward the end of the ULURP for the Project.

These sample EIS documents are being provided to show the amount of project detail needed before environmental review may begin and how urban design recommendations get incorporated into a reasonable worst-case development scenario (RWCDS), as discussed at the May 2, 2011, Committee meeting.

The Scope of Work gives a sense of how the technical analysis is conducted.  The document is organized by environmental impact category.   Since the East 125th Street EIS was done, a revised and improved Technical Manual for the City’s Environmental Review was released in 2010, and as a result, there may be additional impact categories for the Seward Park Project. The Final Scope shows how the Draft Scope of Work was revised after the Public Scoping meeting, and it also includes the public comments received, in Appendix A.

The Project Description describes the proposed development project and the public actions required to allow it to be implemented (see pages 2.0-5 to 2.0-11).  Also included in the Project Description is an illustrative 3D plan showing approximate building bulk and massing (see page 2.0-15), which represents the maximum amount of development (RWCDS), but is not intended to represent the ultimate built project.

Please note that no two projects are exactly alike and these documents are being provided to give the community a sense of what goes into a comprehensive EIS for a major development project, and not to specifically illustrate similarities or differences between the Seward Park project and East 125th Street, or any other project in particular.

Sample EIS Documents - East 125th Street Development Project
1. Final Scope of Work
http://www.nyc.gov/html/mancb3/downloads/cb3docs/E125th%20Street%20-%20EIS%20Final%20Scope%20of%20Work.pdf
2. Project Description Chapter
http://www.nyc.gov/html/oec/downloads/pdf/dme_projects/07DME025M/DEIS/07DME025M_%20DEIS_01_Project_Description.pdf
3. Final EIS Document
http://search1.nyc.gov/search?output=xml_no_dtd&site=default_collection&proxystylesheet=agency_frontend&client=agency_frontend&sitesearch=www.nyc.gov%2Fhtml%2Foec&q=125&go.x=12&go.y=9.