Exploiting the community facilities provision

From the Daily News:

Residents in Crown Heights aren't the only ones fuming over a new condo project that was quietly turned into a homeless shelter.

In Bedford-Stuyvesant, neighbors feel twice burned by a developer who used a loophole to build a tower twice as big as normally allowed - and then turned the oversized structure into a homeless shelter.

The city approved the extra-large building back in 2003 based on plans submitted by architect Henry Radusky, who stated the building was to be a dorm for students and teachers of an all-girls Jewish school in Williamsburg, officials said.

A staffer who answered the phone at the school, the Beth Chana School for Girls, said he didn't know anything about the dorm.

Radusky stood by the original plans and said he had nothing to do with the building's later use.

A loophole in the building code allows developers to build up to twice as high as normally allowed for dorms and other "community facilities."

But neighbors of the Park Ave. building said they never saw any students or teachers before homeless families began arriving nearly two years ago.

Well, that new 45-day review process will certainly put an end to this!