The Comprehensive Plan Requirement

With respect to the comprehensive plan requirement — the focus of this article — the court noted that the village had adopted a comprehensive plan, and conceded that any zoning amendments had to be consistent with that plan. But the court also held that if the amendment's validity were "fairly debatable," the municipality's judgment must control, and indicated that to prevail on a comprehensive plan challenge, the landowner had to establish a "clear conflict" between the amendment and the plan. In Bonacker, landowner failed to establish a clear conflict because the village's 2002 plan had recommended further limitations on gross floor area and coverage for residential structures and accessory buildings to ensure that residential development was "compatible with the scale of existing development."

The Plan Requirement More Generally

New York statutes have long required that zoning regulations "be made in accordance with a comprehensive plan." See, e.g., Village Law section 7-704. New York's courts, however, have not construed that mandate to require that zoning be consistent with any particular planning document. In Udell v. Haas, 21 N.Y.2d 463, the Court of Appeals indicated that the comprehensive plan requirement requires that "rezoning should not conflict with the fundamental land use policies and development plans of the community," and indicated that "these policies may be garnered from any available source, most especially the master plan of the community, if any has been adopted, the zoning law itself and the zoning map." Id. at 472. In Udell itself, the court invalidated a zoning amendment reclassifying land long zoned for business use when the amendment process was instituted the same day that landowner proposed development of his parcel. The amendment, which limited the parcel to residential use, was enacted less than 40 days after landowner first presented a preliminary sketch of his development. In finding that the village had not acted in accordance with a comprehensive plan, the court relied in part on recommendations by the village's own expert indicating that the disputed parcel was suitable for commercial use.

Subsequent decisions seized upon Udell's assertion that the content of the comprehensive plan might be garnered from any source, including the zoning law itself, and essentially held that if a municipality can establish that the amendment promotes the general welfare of the community, the municipality has satisfied the comprehensive plan requirement. Thus, in Gernatt Asphalt Products, Inc. v. Town of Sardinia, 87 N.Y.2d 668, the Court of Appeals upheld an amendment eliminating mining as a permitted use throughout the town, indicating that because landowner had failed to establish that curtailment of the mining industry was contrary to the general welfare of the community, landowner could not prevail on its contention that the amendment was not in accordance with a comprehensive plan.