VILLAGE OF FAYETTEVILLE – In response to the Fayetteville Planning Board’s approval of plans for the grocery store development at 547 E. Genesee St., village resident Marguerite Ross filed a court challenge on Dec. 7 contending that the board acted arbitrarily, capriciously and illegally on multiple fronts.
Ross, whose home on Cammot Lane is adjacent to the approximately 30-acre property, put forth the lawsuit with attorneys from Rochester-based firm Knauf Shaw LLP. The suit objects to the planning board’s September issuing of a negative declaration pursuant to the New York State Environmental Quality Review Act (SEQRA), its granting of a special use permit in November, and its site plan approval on Dec. 5.
The lawsuit argues that the Northwood Real Estate Ventures LLC supermarket project is “virtually identical” to Millstone Development Group LLC’s earlier mixed-use proposal, which the board had determined would go against community character and potentially result in adverse environmental impacts prior to making a positive SEQRA declaration during its February 2021 meeting.
Ross asserts that no exact details have been offered to the public with regard to how the vacated and dilapidated O’Brien and Gere manufacturing building would be downsized, renovated and converted into a “state-of-the-art,” 56,550-square-foot grocery store.
She further claims that the planning board did not conduct a coordinated review after classifying the project as a Type I action and that its members neither supplied findings in support of a special permit issuance nor discussed the standard for site plan approval sufficiently before voting unanimously to give the go-ahead.
The petition goes on to argue that a commercial enterprise of the size proposed in the approved application would preclude nearby residents from enjoying their homes and maintaining the quiet they bargained for when they moved in.
“The increased noise and loss of privacy that will accompany the construction of a grocery store that is more than quintuple the size of what would ordinarily be permitted on this parcel will be severe,” the document reads.
Outside of the lawsuit, Ross said she disapproved of the preparation of a “detailed, lengthy” SEQRA resolution related to the project ahead of the continued public hearing being closed in September, contending that comments from citizens that night felt in turn like “a waste of breath.”
Having submitted letters to the planning board and spoken up at meetings in addition to combining with neighbors in written opposition to the project, Ross said she “exhausted all other options” and brought an Article 78 proceeding as a “last remedy” directed at getting the board to listen to her concerns. She said she is willing to go to the highest levels of New York State’s court system with the suit.
The supermarket has been rumored to be a Hannaford, a chain store with headquarters in Maine and other locations throughout New England and New York. The redevelopment project calls for the remediation of a hazardous brownfield left by Accurate Die Casting, which operated at the East Genesee Street site from 1955 to 1988.
Now retired, Ross previously worked for the Syracuse-Onondaga County Planning Agency and the Baltimore City Planning Department.
The petition and exhibits for her lawsuit can be viewed on the New York State Unified Court System website by going to the electronic filing system and searching as a guest for the case number 010160/2022.
At press time, the Village of Fayetteville had not yet provided comment on the lawsuit.