Early drawing for proposed 87 Union project.
A Philadelphia developer appears to have reached the end of the line in its efforts to stop competitors from building hundreds of new market-rate apartments at the edge of Wooster Square, connecting the neighborhood to downtown.
A state appellate panel Wednesday denied a request filed by the developer, PMC Property Group, to have an appeal heard in order to keep alive its lawsuits against city officials for approving plans by two separate developers.
One plan, from local developer Noel Petra, involves building a 299-unit market-rate apartment complex on industrial/commercial land at 87 Union St. Another plan, from Norwalk-based Spinnaker Real Estate Partners, involves building a 223-unit new community at the site of the old Comcast Building on Chapel Street and a lot across the street.
Petra and Spinnaker are now expected to get started on their projects in coming months.
PMC owns an apartment complex on the other side of Chapel Street in the former Strouse Adler Smoothie factory building. The developer has come under fire for conditions in those apartments in recent years.
Through a limited liability corporation called 78 Olive Street Partners, PMC filed five separate lawsuits against city agencies, seeking to overturn regulatory approvals for Petra’s and Spinnaker’s two planned developments. These projects, once built, would fill in a no-man’s land that currently divides downtown from Wooster Square.
In May, state Superior Court Judge Thomas J. Corrandino dismissed all the suits as lacking merit. This week the appellate panel denied PMC’s request for a certificate for review to have the dismissals reconsidered.
(Click here for a previous story detailing both sides’ arguments in the lawsuits and reporting on a Superior Court judge’s previous dismissals of PMC’s suits.)
PMC’s attorney, Marjorie Shansky, could not be reached for comment on whether the company might try to convince the State Supreme Court to reopen the case. (Roderick Williams of the city’s corporation counsel’s office handled the case for the defendants.)
Jim Perito, the attorney for Spinnaker, said that zoning appeals like these don’t end up in the state Supreme Court. That’s because the court system considers the initial municipal zoning approval proceeding the “trial.”
This means that, for zoning appeals, the Appellate Court essentially functions the way the state Supreme Court does in other cases, as a court of last appeal. A losing party can file suit in Superior Court to challenge an Appellate Court decision, but the Superior Court then functions as an appellate court, reviewing the transcript from those proceedings rather than conducting a new trial on the approval itself. Then the losing party can ask the Appellate Court to review the decision — as PMC did — with the appellate panel playing the role the Supreme Court usually does.
City government celebrated this week’s decision as the apparent end of legal delays to two side-by-side prized development projects.
“Our understanding is this is it, and the projects will begin,” city Economic Development Administrator Matthew Nemerson said Friday. He said both builders have their regulatory approvals in place and are expected to get started building in the second quarter of 2017.
“They’re truly transformative projects because of the connection between Wooster Square and downtown,” Nemerson said. His team is meanwhile negotiating with Spinnaker on another major residential-retail project planned for the block bordered by Audubon, State, Grove, and Orange streets.
Wooster Square Alder Aaron Greenberg said he’s “pleased that the appeals have been dismissed and both projects can move ahead as planned.”
Wow
It's surprising that the mechanisms put in place to allow aggrieved neighbors to have their say about neighborhood change has been warped into this kind of prolonged nuisance suit that ultimately hurts NHV taxpayers by keeping important projects off of the grand list.