Integrating Local Waterfront Revitalization into Local Comprehensive Planning and Zoning

By 2004, more than half of the United States population resided within fifty miles of the coastline, contributing to the mounting pressures on waterfront development. Local waterfront revitalization plans have great potential to efficiently guide community and coastal development in a coordinated fashion across municipal boundaries. Coordination includes intermunicipal and intergovernmental cooperation and consistency as well as coordination between planning and land use controls within the coastal zone and within the boundaries of coastal communities. Part I of this article examines the history of the Coastal Zone Management Act (CZMA)with a particular examination of the Act\u27s impact on local comprehensive land use planning, and it includes a brief discussion of the implementation of the CZMA in various states. Part II focuses on the New York State Coastal Zone Management Program and its requirements for consistency and local land use planning. Part III examines the comprehensive land use plan in New York and the level of coordination between this planning technique and state funded Local Waterfront Revitalization Programs (LWRP). It highlights the lack of legal guidance in New York regarding the relationship between these two documents. This Part also examines how some other states have interpreted or defined coordination and consistency between local comprehensive land use plans and locally developed plans pursuant to state coastal zone programs. The article concludes with the recommendation that a statutory change is needed in New York to directly link the LWRP to local comprehensive land use plans to achieve a more integrated planning and zoning regime within individual municipalities (as well as vertical consistency with state coastal policies), and to provide an effective enforcement mechanism for the LWRP beyond initial state approval of the plan