SUPPORTING SERVICES FOR LAND USE PRACTICE
Once upon a time it was true, without exception, that running a thriving land use practice required a Manhattan office and a support staff. It's still true that the support is necessary, but it's no longer true that you have to be local or hire staff to get it. Like so many things in our modern and connected world, much of the land use process—including some of the most tedious parts—can be outsourced. Whether it's making agency submissions, performing notification mailings, or even attending executive sessions, nearly the entire land use approval process can be outsourced. The only question, then, is how much of your time you want to take back.
NOTIFICATION MAILINGS
Every time you receive a Notice of Hearing that must be mailed to the surrounding property owners, the problem is the same: suddenly several hours of additional work get dropped in someone's lap, and it needs to be done right away—it's at once unexpected, and urgent. Rather than ask someone to stay late, or delay their other tasks, you can simply have our office perform the mailing. After all, do you really need to have a paralegal (or worse yet, an associate) spend any time stuffing envelopes? Simply forward the notification to our office. We will complete the mailing according to agency standards, and will submit the proof of mailing directly to the agency for you.
NOTIFICATION POSTINGS
Certain community districts, or other community groups, ask that meeting notices are either distributed to surrounding businesses and residences, or posted on lampposts in the surrounding area and at the subject Site. (Additionally, effective June 2019, the BSA requires posting hearing notices in the lobby of buildings where legalizing a Physical Culture Establishment is proposed.). Who's going to do that? Do you send a paralegal? Do you ask the client if they can help? You don't need to ask those questions. Simply email the meeting notice and posting instructions, and our staff will perform the posting as soon as possible. When it's complete, you will receive photographs of the posted notices, a map indicating the location where the notices were posted, or an affidavit attesting to the distribution or posting of the notices (when applicable).
AGENCY SUBMISSIONS
The most valuable support service our firm offers—at least in our opinion—is performing agency submissions. Here's what happens: When you submit your submission email to either “submit@bsa...” or “centralintake@planning...” simply cc us; or, if you prefer, forward the email along with additional instructions as needed. We will immediately begin preparing the submission, per agency standards, and make an appointment to submit at the agency's offices. Your submission will be performed (i.e. clocking, stamping, and voiding) by an experienced staff member. The referral mailing (i.e. copies to councilperson, community board etc.) will be completely pursuant to agency requirements (a copy can also be mailed to you.) In short, you'll be able to perform your submission without having to print, copy, collate or staple a single piece of paper. Indeed the submission will be done, on your end, as soon as you hit send on the email. Which means you can submit without coming to Manhattan. You can submit without having a support staff. You can submit from home. You can submit from whatever beach you are vacationing on. Just think about it.
PRESENTATION BOARDS
Presentation boards have long been used to aid in presenting projects in public meetings. You may be wondering, though, why you should still go through the trouble of having them made up in an era of powerpoints and projectors. Well first, it's no longer "trouble"—we've taken the hassle out of ordering presentation boards (as explained below). But the real answer is, we're not there yet. Many public hearing rooms, community board offices, and other venues do not have a projector or screen, and specifically direct speakers not to bring electronic presentations. Those that do often offer an antiquated laptop computer, or poor lighting. And is there anything worse than getting up to present your big and important project, only to have a technical problem that you have to try and troubleshoot while an impatient (if not hostile) audience fumes at the delay?
Presentation boards "work" every time, but until now, they've been a pain. You have to send your files to a print shop, which may or may not understand how you want them printed, and could take days. Then, when they are done you need to arrange to have the boards shipped from the printer back to your office, at an additional cost.
When you order presentation boards from Urban Cartographics, though, the entire process is simplified. First, we understand the material you want printed on boards; maybe we even produced some of it. Second, our presentation boards include, in the price, delivery to any location in Manhattan, or to the outer boroughs at a modest fee. Last but not least, we can even affix quarter-sized magnets to your presentation boards so that if you are presenting in front of a magnetic white board (like the one at 22 Reade Street), your boards snap up effortlessly.
CUSTOM MEETING PRESENTATIONS
Some people prepare a custom presentation for their public meetings and hearings, some just insert relevant parts of the application into a PowerPoint, others have no presentation at all. To be fair, that says more about the complexity (or controversy) of the matter than it does about the practitioner. That being said, there are times when you need something special to support your presentation, and we would be pleased to prepare a custom presentation. Again, this is not just a few of the graphics from your application (you can pull those together yourself ). This is when you need to use visuals to translate the complexity of the application into something that you can use to explain the proposal with to the public, elected officials, or an administrative body.
APPLICATION DRAFTING
Sometimes drafting an application is the ultimate expression of your skill as a land use practitioner. Other times, it is rote process; finding the best template, inserting accurate details, and proofing. When it's the latter, you don't need to do it yourself, and it may even be a waste of your time. If that's the case, we are more than happy to help. We've drafted all manner of land use applications, from PCE special permits to complex rezonings; from preliminary meeting requests, to discussions of findings to modify topographic features. Even if you can't imagine relinquishing this most essential of roles, imagine having your first draft—the one where you have to look up the block, the lot, the community district, the council district—prepared for you.
And in case you don’t want your colleagues to know you have a ghost writer, don’t worry, your secret is safe with us. Just think, until now you probably didn’t realize that documents drafted by Urban Cartographics have been used to secure hundreds of land use approvals over the past ten years.
AGENCY RESEARCH
Traveling to a City Agency, waiting in line to submit a research request, then waiting for someone to pull your file, and then sorting through old documents looking for a particular detail is nothing if not time consuming. Can you spare 2-3 hours of your time, or your associate's, looking for something as simple as an old set of approved plans, or a 1940 tax photo, or a 1970's rooftop sign permit application? Whether it's reviewing a file from the BSA archives, following up on a FOIL request at the Department of City planning, or going through project folders and microfiche at the Department of Buildings, why not send us instead? It's almost certainly faster (our staff is at the City agencies downtown nearly every day), and more cost effective, than going down yourself. Besides, you should reclaim the time to work on something more important.
RESEARCH AND MEMOS
Where do you turn when you need someone to perform research related to NYC land use, and you or your associates are busy? Call us. We have extensive experience researching all types of questions. For example: How many times has the BSA granted a variance in an M1-5 or M1-6 district in Manhattan to permit residential use, and when they have, what FAR's have been approved? Or: Have there been any rezonings in this neighborhood in the past 20 years that increased FAR or expanded the list of permitted uses, and if so, what was the rationale (or political motive) at play? There's no reason to waste the time of an associate or paralegal when you can simply have the research and memo prepared for you.