Town of Eden, NY: zoning for new construction

Agricultural Priority - The four-acre minimum does not change with utilities: it is four acres whether or not public water and sewer reach the parcel. A farm operation is held to a different standard again, which raises the minimum here to five acres.

• Keeping cattle, sheep, goats, pigs or horses requires at least twenty acres, and keeping fowl at least five
• Hobby farming is capped at four horses over six months old, ten fowl and two of any other species
• No animal may be housed within seventy-five feet of a plot line, except dogs and cats
• Accessory buildings keep the same thirty-five feet to each side and rear as the house, and may stand in a front yard at fifty feet back
• Barns, silos and produce warehouses must meet the principal-building yards
• A farm stand may not exceed five thousand square feet and must sit thirty feet from any line

Rural Residential - A farm operation is held to a different standard: five acres, two hundred feet of frontage, a fifty-foot front yard, thirty-five feet to each side and rear and thirty-five percent coverage.

• Accessory buildings take thirty-five feet to each side and rear behind a house, and may stand in a front yard at fifty feet back
• A townhouse may be subdivided onto its own lot only where that lot is at least four times the floor area of the dwelling
• Single-family attached housing is permitted outright, and a multi-unit building only by special use permit
• Keeping cattle, sheep, goats, pigs or horses requires at least twenty acres, and keeping fowl at least five
• Hobby farming is capped at four horses over six months old, ten fowl and two of any other species
• No animal may be housed within seventy-five feet of a plot line, except dogs and cats

Multi-Family Residential - A multiple-dwelling structure must stand at least fifty feet from every lot line, more than the thirty-five feet shown to the side and rear. Multiple dwellings must be served by public water and sewer, and the two-acre minimum is the figure for a serviced lot.

• No detached single-family house is permitted here, and single-family attached needs a special use permit
• The Planning Board may reduce the fifty-foot separation only for townhouse forms and only to the semi-attached standard
• A building may not run more than a hundred and sixty feet long, and no roofline may run eighty feet without a vertical break
• No structure may stand closer to another than the height of the taller wall
• Accessory buildings take thirty-five feet to each side and rear and are barred from front yards

Neighborhood Residential - A farm operation is held to a different standard: five acres, 125 ft of frontage, a fifty-foot front yard, thirty-five feet to each side and rear and thirty-five percent coverage.

• Accessory buildings take the same five feet to the side and twenty to the rear as the house behind a residence, and fifty feet each way under the farm standard
• Accessory buildings are barred from front yards in every case
• Banks, personal services, retail sales, medical offices and day care are permitted here by special use permit, and no lot area, frontage or yards are published for them

Light Industrial - This district requires no lot area, no frontage and no front yard: the only yards are ten feet to each side and twenty to the rear, which accessory buildings take as well.

• Accessory buildings are barred from front yards
• No residential use of any kind is permitted here
• Licensed adult-use cannabis retail dispensaries and on-site consumption sites need a special use permit, and may not sit on a property adjacent to one whose primary use is residential

Parkland - No lot area, frontage, yard, coverage or height standard is published for this district. What binds instead are the setbacks the code puts on the recreational facilities themselves.

• A single-family detached house, a place of worship, a library, a restaurant, a brewpub, a craft brewery and both indoor and outdoor recreation are permitted outright
• Handball courts, concession stands, casino buildings, concentrated picnic areas and a baseball diamond stand a hundred feet from any property line
• The distances scale down from there: sixty for basketball and volleyball, fifty for outfield, unimproved picnic grounds, golf and horseshoe pits, forty for tennis and twenty-five for parking areas
• Each of those distances doubles where lighting allows the facility to be used after ten at night
• A swimming pool over three thousand five hundred square feet must sit a hundred and seventy-five feet from any property line, scaling down through four smaller classes

Mixed-Use 1 - The front figure is a build-to band, not a floor: a building on a primary street must stand between zero and twenty feet from the right-of-way, or at the average setback of the principal structures within two hundred feet if that is less.

• In no case may a front plane sit more than twenty feet back, and where an approved public open space fronts the street the band runs eleven to twenty feet
• A side yard may be zero feet where the state building code allows it, and on a lot without driveways the two side yards may not add up to more than twenty feet
• Where a driveway runs down the side, the side yards may total forty-five feet
• The twenty-foot rear yard applies where the lot abuts a district boundary
• A building must be at least two usable stories, and at least forty percent of a first-floor facade between three and ten feet above grade must be transparent
• No lot area and no frontage are published for this district

Mixed-Use 2 - These figures are the Mixed-Use 1 standards, adopted here by cross-reference. The front figure is a build-to band, not a floor: a building on a primary street must stand between zero and twenty feet from the right-of-way.

• The band may instead run to the average setback of the principal structures within two hundred feet if that is less, and in no case may a front plane sit more than twenty feet back
• Where an approved public open space fronts the street the band runs eleven to twenty feet
• A side yard may be zero feet where the state building code allows it, and on a lot without driveways the two side yards may not add up to more than twenty feet
• Where a driveway runs down the side, the side yards may total forty-five feet
• A building must be at least two usable stories, and at least forty percent of a first-floor facade between three and ten feet above grade must be transparent
• No lot area and no frontage are published for this district