## Facts

- The City of Schenectady created an A-2 Single Family Historic District that included the General Electric Realty Plot, a historic residential neighborhood listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
- A 1978 ordinance limited the district largely to single-family residences but allowed educational, religious, philanthropic, and similar institutions to seek special use permits.
- In 1984, the City amended its zoning code to limit permitted uses in the district to single-family dwellings and to restrict special-permit uses to public utility facilities, effectively eliminating special-permit consideration for educational uses.
- The zoning scheme still allowed applicants to seek (1) variances based on practical difficulties or unnecessary hardships and (2) legislative text amendments to the zoning code.
- Union College owned seven properties within the district adjacent to its campus.
- In 1992, Union proposed a text amendment to allow specified nonresidential educational uses (e.g., faculty/administrative offices and housing for visiting guests) as special-permit uses in the district.
- City historic-preservation bodies opposed the proposed amendment, predicting adverse effects on historic preservation values.
- After the City took no favorable action, Union discontinued pursuit of the amendment and filed a declaratory judgment action in 1995 asserting that the zoning provision was unconstitutional on its face.

## Issues

1. Whether a municipality may lawfully exclude educational institutions from a residential historic district by denying any opportunity to apply for special-use permits, consistent with New York zoning authority and precedent recognizing educational uses as favored.
2. Whether a facial challenge was barred or premature because the college did not seek a variance or continue pursuing a legislative zoning amendment.

## Decision

- The New York Court of Appeals affirmed the judgment for Union College.
- The Court held the zoning provision unconstitutional on its face to the extent it categorically excluded educational uses from any special-permit process in the A-2 Single Family Historic District.
- The Court rejected the City’s reliance on variance and code-amendment procedures as adequate substitutes for a lawful mechanism to consider educational uses on an individualized basis.
- The Court held that historic-preservation concerns could be addressed through case-specific conditions and standards, not a total ban on educational uses.

## Legal Principles

- Educational uses are treated as presumptively beneficial; municipalities may regulate them but generally may not bar them categorically from an entire district.
- A zoning scheme that forecloses any special-permit mechanism for educational uses, and instead relegates them to hardship variances or discretionary legislative amendments, exceeds municipal zoning authority and is unconstitutional on its face.
- Legitimate local concerns, including historic preservation, may support conditions and limits imposed through individualized review, but do not justify blanket exclusion of favored uses.
- Although zoning enactments carry a presumption of constitutionality, that presumption is overcome where the enactment is unauthorized under state zoning law principles governing favored uses.

## Conclusion

The Court held that the City could not eliminate any special-permit pathway for educational uses within a historic single-family district; historic-preservation and neighborhood impacts must be managed through case-by-case review and reasonable conditions rather than categorical exclusion.


Trs. of Union Coll. v. Members of the Schenectady City Council, 91 N.Y.2d 161 (N.Y. 1997)