Zoning floor area

Zoning floor area is floor area as the Zoning Resolution defines it in § 12-10 — the quantity that FAR actually measures. The definition is long because of its carve-outs: certain cellar space, certain mechanical space, and certain parking space, among others, do not count against the floor-area budget, under conditions that vary by district and use.

The practical consequence is that a building has several honest sizes. Gross construction area, marketed square footage, and zoning floor area are different quantities serving different purposes, and confusing them is among the most common errors in development math. When the question is what zoning permits, only the § 12-10 measure matters — and computing it from raw dimensions requires reading the carve-outs, not skipping them.