SPACE& neighbors file article 78
Supervisor Phil Marino announced, with anger, that SPACEand some
residents of Hoke Drive had filed an Article 78 which could compel the town
to overturn its decision to approve the Super Shoprite shopping mall they
approved last month. SPACE and the local residents claim that the town
had acted in an arbitrary and capricious manner in granting approval
to the 93,000 sq, ft. shopping mall on Kay-Fries Drive. SPACE and the
residents had attempted to give testimony to the town board that questioned
the applicant's claims that there would be no traffic problems, drainage
problems, or any problems that might arise from constructing and operating
a supermarket and nine other stores on a "former" toxic superfund site.
Although SPACE had obtained a considerable amount of information
through the Freedom Of Information Act (FOIL), the supervisor would allow
each person only three minutes to speak to the board during the SEQRA
(State Environmental Quality Review Act) public hearing. The town board
largely ingnored the written information SPACE supplied them (and much of
the information came from the town's own records), as well as demands
from the New York State Department Of Transportation for another access
to the site in addition to the single access through Kay-Fries Drive/9W
intersection before they would permit a traffic light there., a requirement from the DEC for a SPDES (drainage) permit , and a disapproval from the Rockland County Planning Board stating that, by Stony Point's own town law, the application was an overuse of the property. The Article 78 also questions how the Building Inspector could logically permit the application under the Zoning definition of a "Local Convenience Commercial Use" (... Establishments that deal in the retail sales of convenience goods (food, drugs and sundries) and such personal services as laundry and dry cleaning (pick-up and delivery), hair styling and shoe repair. The maximum permitted aggregate gross floor area on any site shall not exceed 100,000 square feet. The floor area of any single store shall not exceed 8,000 square feet, except that food stores or combined sales stores may not exceed 45,000 square feet. Other commercial uses of any kind elsewhere specified in this chapter shall not be deemed "local convenience commercial."). SPACE believes that the town adopted this use illegally and has filed a complaint (read more... )with the New York State Attorney General's office, and can't see how anyone could reasonably interpret that part of town code in such a patently ridiculous way.
SPACE feels that it is unfortunate that a lawsuit to compel the town to follow the law had to be filed, but such a flagrant violation of law and common sense has to be corrected. The only redress State provides for is this lawsuit. The courts will now have to decide an issue that our elected officials sought to avoid. While SPACE supports new businesses coming to Stony Point, the Crossroads/ShopRite application is an obvious overuse of the building site that is incompatible with surrounding businesses as identified by the Rockland County Planning Board, a clear example of the Town of Stony Point's total disregard for its responsibility as lead agency to fully consider the environmental and traffic issues as required by the NYS DOT and DEC and a failure by the Town Building Inspector to comply with town law, based solely on his self-appointed authority and reckless interpretation of the town code.
Supervisor Marino claims that SPACE will cost the town $20,000 to defend against the lawsuit. We would like to note that it is actually THE TOWN BOARD who is costing the town that money. They would not let us speak at the public hearings, and they never discussed the many issues that we did raise concerning the application. Had they done their job correctly, no lawsuit would have been necessary. Stony Point has a long history of ignoring proper planning procedures, and then needing to deal with the costs of their careless mistakes afterward. Former supervisor and felon Steve Hurley used to make the same charges against SPACE. The courts found him wrong as well.
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