Citation Numbers: 114 Misc. 2d 710
Judges: Bayger
Filed Date: 6/11/1982
Status: Precedential
Modified Date: 2/5/2022
OPINION OF THE COURT
The petitioner herein is a duly organized religious corporation which seeks to compel the Buffalo Common Council’s authorization of a use permit for its proposed conversion of commercial property located at 1054-56 Broadway into an independent, nonaffiliated Christian church. The premises are presently occupied and used by the petitioner for religious purposes under a month-to-month lease executed on the petitioner’s behalf by the congregation’s pastor individually. Petitioner’s most recent application for a use permit was denied by the city’s Department of Inspections and Licenses pursuant to a January 23,1981 common council resolution which created a new “special review zoning district” within the city’s Broadway-Fillmore neighborhood and imposed a one-year moratorium on the issuance of building permits for new construction or use permits for new and different property uses within the designated business district. The resolution was enacted in furtherance of the city’s extensive Broadway-Fillmore
. Religious uses of property are presumed to be in furtherance of public morals and the general welfare. They therefore enjoy a somewhat preferred and constitutionally protected status which severely limits the permissible reach of zoning restrictions and other regulations enacted pursuant to municipal police powers (Matter of Westchester Reform Temple v Brown, 22 NY2d 488). That is not to say, however, that a religious use is totally immune from municipal proscription. So long as the regulation or restriction sought to be imposed bears a substantial and direct relationship to the public health, safety, morals or general welfare, it may be upheld (ibid.). Here, the petitioners seeks to convert leased commercial property situated in the heart of a deteriorating neighborhood’s previously thriving business district to a private religious use. After appropriate investigation, the council determined that such a conversion would be incompatible and inconsistent with the city’s efforts to accomplish that district’s commercial rehabilitation and revitalization.
The extensive deterioration and disinvestment which the Broadway-Fillmore business district has experienced in recent years is all too evident. It is a matter of considerable municipal concern and a very real threat to the successful completion of the city’s entire Broadway-Fillmore neighborhood rehabilitation program. That substantially funded and carefully considered project bears an obvious and direct relationship to the general welfare of