With the rezoning plan now overturned indefinitely, Bendit said he anticipated the costs of the project would soar, potentially forcing the developer to rethink the levels and mix of affordability at the development.

“Yes our land basis just became a lot more expensive,” said Bendit, who is the co-chief executive officer of Taconic with his long-time partner in the business, Paul Pariser. “And you’re working with architects and engineers and lawyers and then you have to put everything on hold. When you restart there’s a cost to that.”

The scuttling of the rezoning is another example of an increasingly uncertain regulatory environment for real estate development in the city and of the growing blowback against an industry that has been accused of displacing city residents and changing the fabric of neighborhoods.

“Today, it has almost become an accepted practice to go against real estate developers,” Bendit said. “We’re like the devil. But yet we, most of us I would say, are doing the right thing, creating opportunities for people to live and work in New York City.”

Bendit said that when he heard about the scuttling of the rezoning last Thursday, he contemplated Taconic’s future in the city. He wouldn’t be alone: several large real estate executives have contemplated exiting the city after a fusillade of political losses, regulatory changes, litigation and growing negative sentiment.

Taconic has been involved in several large scale development projects in the city, including the ongoing development of a mixed complex on the Lower East Side known as Essex Crossing.

“I said to my wife it’s becoming so difficult to do business in this city,” Bendit said. “After a night of thinking about it though, it’s a great city and I do hope to do business here and I realize that things do change. I hope people will see that development done right is good for the city.”

Another developer hard hit by the scuttled rezoning is Madd Equities. The company was in the preliminary stages of planning to raise an over 600-unit residential project nearby Taconic’s site at 3875 9th Ave.

Without the rezoning in place, both it and Taconic’s development don’t have the leeway to build residential space on their sites nor the allowable density to raise projects as large.

Last year, a collection of neighborhood opponents, including a community group called Northern Manhattan is Not For Sale, filed suit in state court against the city to overturn the rezoning. In a decision issued on Thursday, the judge agreed with an assertion by the plaintiffs that issues and concerns they had raised during the city’s public land use review process for the rezoning hadn’t been properly accounted for in an environmental review.

Several planning attorneys interviewed by Crain’s to assess the decision disputed it and suggested it would be overturned. The city, whose Economic Development Corp. spearheaded the Inwood rezoning, stated that it plans to appeal. Mayor Bill de Blasio, whose administration has pursued rezoning in several major neighborhood to spur the construction of thousands of new units of affordable housing, slammed the verdict on Friday.

Several observers, however, expressed concerns that, whether or not the decision ultimately stands on appeal, it could embolden more legal challenges to rezoning around the city and complicate an already-arduous land use process here.

"Every time there’s a rezoning and an environmental impact statement, it can’t be subject to nullification because of a set of fine-grained environmental objections,” Mitchell Korbey, a land-use attorney and partner at Herrick Feinstein said. “This is an example of an activist judge siding up to a group of opponents after a long and robust public review process.”