By Lauren Young
A judge has ordered the village of Fayetteville to make a final determination in either accepting or denying Morgan Management’s application for rezoning to a PUD (Planned Urban Development), after the developer filed a lawsuit against the village, by Feb. 19, 2019.
FOUBU Environmental Services LLC — formed by O’Brien & Gere — and Rochester-based developer Morgan Acquisitions LLC filed a lawsuit against Fayetteville in September after it pulled its reconsideration of a development proposal for an apartment-retail complex on 547 E. Genesee Street along Route 5, saying the move “violated lawful procedures.”
Rather than answering to the merits of the case, Kathleen Bennett of Bond, Schoeneck & King, representing the plaintiff, said the village made a motion to dismiss the case on procedural grounds.
The pending motion, originally set for Nov. 14, was adjourned for Wednesday, Dec. 19, at the Onondaga Supreme and County Courts House in Syracuse in front of Judge Anthony J. Paris, who denied the developer’s petition against the village but ruled that the village must make a decision regarding the application’s validity in the next two months, said Bennett.
From here, the developer will return to the village and speak in front of the board of trustees before making a final determination, she said.
Morgan Management had proposed a 200-unit apartment-retail space at the former O’Brien & Gere manufacturing site in Fayetteville, but, while a zone change request was pending, a grand jury indicted two company officials on bank and wire fraud charges.
The project was dropped last June a few weeks after the indictments and dropped for a second time after the developer did not meet an agreed set of conditions to continue, said Mayor Mark Olson.
But according to the petition, “the mayor had no authority to decide the fate of a PUD application,” and the plaintiffs were misled into believing the project would be approved.
According to the 40-page lawsuit, the village’s decision was “arbitrary and capricious,” used “unconstitutional exclusionary zoning,” was an “abuse of discretion” and was taken “without just compensation.”
The village’s Brownfield Cleanup Program credits for 547 E. Genesee Street will expire at the end of the month, and according to the lawsuit, may sit “vacant and contaminated for the indefinite future” if its application is denied.
