What a Sending Lot Gives Up When Its Floor Area Moves
By Michael Stern, JDS Development Group Photo by Parsoa Khorsand on Unsplash An owner of a five story building on a good block asks what it would take to add three floors, and the answer comes back from the title report rather than from the zoning map. The lot still has a district, a permitted floor area, and a shape. What it no longer has is the unused area that once sat above the roof, because that area was sent to a neighboring lot years ago and it is not coming back. This is written for developers looking at assemblage, for land use lawyers who field the same question from the other direction, and for owners of small buildings who assume the room above them is still an asset they hold. The mechanism is ordinary. The consequence is permanent, and that combination is rare enough in this business to be worth understanding before anyone signs anything. How Floor Area Leaves a Lot Permanently Unused floor area is an arithmetic difference. It is what the zoning permits on a lot les...