Land Use and Housing

Today, as it was in 1989, New Castle’s land area is com­prised main­ly of bucol­ic, low-den­si­ty res­i­den­tial neigh­bor­hoods. Of the Town’s approx­i­mate­ly 15,000 acres, 14,488 acres are zoned for sin­gle-fam­i­ly res­i­den­tial use, and of these, 91% (13,194 acres) have one- or two-acre min­i­mum lot sizes. The remain­ing 9% (1,294 acres) of res­i­den­tial­ly zoned land area has half- and quar­ter-acre min­i­mum lot sizes. This low den­si­ty res­i­den­tial devel­op­ment pat­tern, derived from the Town’s zon­ing, has helped to main­tain scenic vis­tas, large lots, areas of open space qual­i­ty, and forest­ed and undis­turbed swaths of land that char­ac­ter­ize the Town’s neigh­bor­hoods. Preser­va­tion of the bucol­ic res­i­den­tial char­ac­ter of the community’s neigh­bor­hoods is a pri­or­i­ty to New Castle’s res­i­dents and has been made a pri­or­i­ty in this Plan.

New Castle’s hous­ing stock is pre­dom­i­nant­ly sin­gle-fam­i­ly. Of the 6,037 hous­ing units in New Cas­tle, approx­i­mate­ly 5,530 (92%) are sin­gle-fam­i­ly. Over the past few decades, fol­low­ing zon­ing changes made to the Town Code in the 1970s and rec­om­men­da­tions made in the TDP, a num­ber of mul­ti-fam­i­ly hous­ing units were devel­oped around the Town. Today, there are approx­i­mate­ly 655 town­house units in the Town of New Cas­tle as well as 135 per­mit­ted acces­so­ry apart­ments, although this num­ber may actu­al­ly be high­er as not all acces­so­ry apart­ments in use have been per­mit­ted. As this plan is being final­ized build­ing per­mits are in place to con­struct more than 92 (some of them afford­able and work-force) mul­ti-fam­i­ly hous­ing units in the community’s ham­let areas and at Chap­paqua Cross­ing with­in the next five years. If con­struct­ed as planned, these units will help diver­si­fy the Town’s hous­ing stock, while main­tain­ing the pat­tern of low den­si­ty devel­op­ment out­side the hamlets.