The City Council approved a plan two years in the making on Tuesday which will restrict how tall new buildings on the Upper West Side can be.

With this approval comes the near end of a process that began in April to certify a rezoning plan that neighborhood residents, elected officials, and the City Planning Commission have been working on since 2005, when locals protested the “non-contextual” twin 31- and 37-story Extell Development Corporation towers inching too far skyward on Broadway.

“The victory of this is of greater importance when you realize that every single piece of Manhattan is prime real estate,” Councilmember Melissa Mark Viverito (D-Upper West Side) said in an interview. “Everywhere people are looking to build up.”

Mayor Michael Bloomberg has five days to decide whether to veto the rezoning plan, but there has been no indication that he will, especially since the plan received the endorsement of the City Planning Commission.

The City Council’s approval also comes on the heels of a controversy that erupted this summer when the Jewish Home & Hospital Lifecare System on 106th Street submitted plans to build a 15-story nursing facility and to sell some land for a 14-story residential tower, just a few months before the new zoning plan would have made these building heights illegal.

Members of Community Board 7, whose aims were to preserve the “context” of the neighborhood, worked with elected officials, the Home, and groups like the Manhattan Valley Preservation Coalition and the Duke Ellington Boulevard Neighborhood Association to come to a compromise.

The Home’s new nursing facility will be taller than would have been allowed under the new zoning rules, but will have a setback from the sidewalk characteristic of the new zoning plan. The privately developed building planned for part of the site is close to a size that the new zoning would have permitted.

The Home also agreed to provide community access to their auditorium, gardens, and other facilities—perks Community Board 7 Chairman Sheldon Fine called “sweeteners” added in on top of the Home’s guarantee that the restrictions placed on the nursing facility and the residential parcel will apply to any future development of those parcels.

“It’s a sure, strong guarantee to the community that for now and the future, the built character of that area of Manhattan Valley will be maintained,” Fine said.

Fine will also sit on a community advisory board with Audrey Weiner, president of the Jewish Home and Hospital, and others to oversee construction at the site and other aspects of the neighborhood’s relationship with the Jewish Home.

“We are grateful that, following months of intense discussion, a new skilled nursing facility that doesn’t sacrifice important, innovative programming can now be fully designed and built,” Weiner said. “The process has resulted in open and ongoing communications between Jewish Home and the community.”

Viverito called the agreement to provide community services “ground-breaking” in her statement to the City Council on Tuesday. “This agreement has far more teeth than the standard community benefits agreement,” she said. “Hopefully [it] will serve as a successful model of what can be achieved when all parties negotiate in good faith.”