News from Skylands CLEAN, Inc.

TCR townhouse plan resurrected

Suburban Trends
Sunday, July 27, 2008
by Bryan LaPlaca
Staff Writer

A dead monster has risen again. Judges ruled on July 24 that a developer can pursue building 100 townhouses on Union Valley and Dockerty Hollow roads in a community that would be called Valley Ridge.

The project abhorrent to local environmental activists was thought dead after Atlanta-based developer Trammell Crow Residential (TCR) was not able to extend its exemption from the state Highlands Act when the exemption expired last August. The 2004 law puts tight restrictions on development in North Jersey in order to protect the state's drinking water supply. TCR bought the 27-acre property of the proposed 11-acre development that same year from the Valley Ridge Development Corporation, which had received the preliminary approvals.

TCR's project was originally exempt from the Highlands Act because the project's preliminary development approvals came in 1997 before the Act's adoption. But local environmental groups like the Pequannock River Coalition and Skylands CLEAN kept the developer tied up in court until the exemption expired.

CLEAN had requested clarification on TCR's site plan application in February 2006, challenging the validity of the preliminary site plan approval and the project's grandfathered status.

The West Milford Planning Board asked the Superior Court for a ruling on the validity of the preliminary approval, which had expired in 2002. A decision in June 2006 by Superior Court Judge Anthony Graziano directed the Planning Board to proceed with hearings on Valley Ridge, without ruling on the validity of the preliminary approval. Judge Graziano ruled that the developer's reliance on township planning officials' opinions on the application, which TCR considered in its decision to invest in the project, gave TCR the right to proceed.

Hearings on Valley Ridge resumed, and West Milford's planning board denied TCR's final site plan application in July 2006. The board cited lack of recent water testing and environmental impact studies as reasons for the rejection. TCR challenged the denial, and CLEAN joined the suit in support of the Planning Board's decision, and challenged Valley Ridge's Highlands exemption.

Last Thursday's ruling from Appellate Court Judges Jose Fuentes, Jane Grall, and Amy Chambers came as a disappointment to Skylands CLEAN.

"This is a crushing blow for West Milford residents who have guarded their water supply so carefully for so many years. Further, it undermines Highlands protection in general," said Robin O'Hearn, Skyland CLEAN executive director. "If the opinions of local planning officials can get developers around Highlands regulations, we're all in trouble."

O'Hearn called TCR's action an "end run around the Highlands rules."

"TCR made significant changes to their site plan from what had been presented in the 1990s. They need a new water permit and must condemn property for their sewer line. This project should have never been brought before the Planning board, and its ultimate approval is the direct result of mistakes by planning officials. What a shame," she said.

The township has not yet decided what its response will be, said Mayor Bettina Bieri. The matter would be discussed in a future executive session of the Township Council, she said.There, she said, the township's legal counsel would advise the mayor and council what its legal options are, how much they would cost and the likelihood of winning.

Attorney Jonathan Epstein, who represented TCR in the case, said that the next step for his client is to await a response to its pending applications before the state Department of Environmental Protection for an extension of its Highlands Act exemption.

"The Appellate Division confirmed what we've been saying all along -- that there was no basis for the West Milford Planning Board to turn down the site plan application to begin with," said Epstein.

"There was an effort to delay the project because there was no merit to the position taken by the Planning Board, and in essence that's what both the trial court held and that's what the appellate court affirmed."