Transfer of Development Rights
Transferable development rights (TDR) is a way of controlling land use to complement zoning and strategic planning for more effective urban growth management and land conservation. TDR is as a creative, innovative, and experimental form of development control. It offers landowners financial incentives or bonuses for the conservation and maintenance of the environmental, heritage or agricultural values of their land. TDR is based on the concept that with land ownership comes the right of use of land, or development. These land-based development rights can in some jurisdictions be used, unused, transferred or sold by the owner of a parcel.
TDR Credit Banks can be used to store development rights that have been purchased if there is not yet a receiving area development identified. This mechanism is used when the time of the sale in the sending area is not concurrent with a development in the receiving area. It is also useful in communities that have the opportunity to purchase the rights from an area of high conservation interest but do not have a development that can receive higher density at the time. TDR credit banks should be operated by a third party organization that is empowered to negotiate the sale of development rights such as a non-profit organization or an agency operating within the community.
For example, some counties allow air rights to be transferred to the surrounding buildings. Thus in a dense downtown area, each building in the area may have the right to thirty-five stories of airspace. The owners of an old building of only three stories high could make a great deal of money by selling their building and allowing a thirty-five story skyscraper to be built in its place. To avoid the loss of historically interesting buildings, the government may instead choose to permit developers to purchase the unused air rights of nearby land. In this case, a skyscraper developer may purchase the unused 32 stories of air rights from the owners of the historic building, allowing them to build a skyscraper to a total height of 35 + 32 = 67 stories. This will allow the historic building owners to make almost as much money, if not more, without demolishing their building.
In November 2005, Christ Church in New York sold their air rights for a record $430 per square foot. They made more than $30 million on the sale.
Read more about this topic: Air Rights
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