Ghent lot coverage review

What the law would change

Today, lot coverage means the share of a lot covered by buildings (Chapter 190, section 190-2), in every district. Proposed Local Law 1 keeps that definition in the residential districts (RRA-1, RRA-2, VR, HR) but, in the business districts (HB, VB, C-1, C-2, C-3), adds pavement, gravel, compacted stone, parking, loading, storage and semi-impervious surfaces to the count. On a lot in more than one district, each district portion is calculated on its own.

The Appendix B maximums do not change under the draft:

How to read the map

Every parcel is shaded by its proposed-rule coverage as a share of its district maximum, worst district portion: under a quarter of the maximum, a quarter to a half, half to 80%, 80% to the line, over the maximum. Residential lots keep their buildings-only figure. Grey lots have no maximum or were not classified.

Click any parcel. The panel opens with the coverage arithmetic per district portion: portion area, building area, developed surface, coverage under the current rule, coverage under the proposed rule, and the maximum in brackets. Business lots carry a case sheet (three panels: 2019 leaf-on imagery, the classified surfaces, the current state orthophoto with the Appendix B setback envelope) and a swipe compare view. Where a residential portion of a business lot is paved, the panel prints the figure it would have if counted, because the draft leaves that pavement out.

The Map button switches the shading to the current rule or to developed surface alone, and turns the zoning district lines, the flood overzone and the county reference layers on or off. Zoning in the panel lists the Appendix A uses and Appendix B dimensions for the lot's district.

What the numbers say

Of the business-district portions townwide, none exceeds its maximum under the current buildings-only rule. Under the proposed rule, two do, both on Route 9H (a skating rink and a restaurant, each in the low sixties against a 60% cap), and about nine more sit within reach of theirs. The typical HB lot moves from roughly 10% coverage to roughly 40%; the typical VB lot from 4% to 12%. A single uniform business cap that kept 95% of today's portions conforming would need to be about 62%.

The full tables, charts and method are in the board report; every business lot's sheet is in the case sheet index, worst first.

How it was measured, and what to trust

• Districts come from the town's own "Ghent Zoning Districts" map (the Google map published with the zoning code), which follows the county parcel lines. The adopted paper map controls on any discrepancy.
• Buildings are the New York State building footprint layer, drawn from 2014 to 2017 imagery. Buildings put up since are missing from it (the Route 9H self-storage yard, for one); a check against the county assessor's inventory agrees on 77% of built lots and on 98% of the town's total roof area.
• Developed surface is classified from summer 2019 four-band aerial imagery by vegetation index: asphalt, gravel, concrete and bare compacted ground count, lawn and brush do not. Where the assessor lists paving, the estimate lands within a few percent of it on lots that are all asphalt; gravel yards and storage areas the assessor does not carry make the estimate read higher there. Treat any single lot's figure as an estimate to be confirmed on the ground before it is relied on.
• District portions narrower than about 10 feet, or under 2% of the lot, are treated as line-drawing rounding and folded into the lot's main district.
• Lots that straddle a road are counted as one lot, the way the county files them.

Parcel lines and ownership: Columbia County Real Property, 2025 cut. Assessment inventory: Columbia County PROS, September 2026. Imagery: NYS orthoimagery and USDA NAIP 2019. Nothing on this site is a determination on any property; questions to the Building Department.