Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on July 11, 2021

NEW WINDSOR A four-year controversy over a proposed warehouse development that neighbors fiercely opposehas now spawned its fourth court case.

The latest lawsuit was filed last week in state Supreme Court in Goshen by the owner of the 120-acre property at Route 207 and Toleman Road and the developer who planned to build Stewart Hill Industrial Park, a project consisting of nearly 500,000 square feet of mostly warehouse space.

The plaintiffs are asking the court to overturn the town's recent rezoning of their property, which would restrict it to residential development. They were making their second attempt to get Planning Board approval for their project after a judge voided their 2019 approval in a lawsuit brought by the neighbors.

Rejection: Board denies moratorium waiver for warehouse developer

Overturned: Court invalidates approval for New Windsor warehouse plans

Approval: Developer gets conditional OK for warehouse project

Included in both the new lawsuit and a similar case the developer brought against the New Windsor Town Board in federal court in February are his claimthat town officials began working with the neighbors to thwart the project after learning of his ties to the Hasidic community of Kiryas Joel.

The developer is Zigmund Brach, who is currently building the 181-home Smith Farm project in Monroe and 482-home Forest Edge in Kiryas Joel. His evidence for possible anti-Hasidic motivation was an email from a resident to fellow warehouse opponents and apparently forwarded to town officials that urges them to Google Brach's name for information about his "past real estate dealings in Kiryas Joel."

Neighbors have fought the warehouse proposal since 2017, arguing it didn't belong in a largely residential area and would lower home property values and have other negative effects for more than 70 nearby homes. They won a round of the litigation in 2020 when a judge agreed the project didn't conform to the town's zoning.

Brach and the property owner, Henry Van Leeuwen, have both appealed the decision and submitted a revised development plan in response to the ruling. They also sued the Town Board in December after it imposed a development moratorium and refused to grant Stewart Hill a waiver so the Planning Board could review the new plans.

A judge sided with Brach and Van Leeuwen on the waiver denial in May, but the decision was moot by then. The town had finished updating its Comprehensive Plan and zoning and lifted the moratorium. Among the zoning changes was one switching the bulk of the Stewart Hill property to residential developmentinstead of offices and light industry.

Van Leeuwen is a longtime New Windsor resident and local business owner who served on the town Planning Board for decades. He stepped down in 2017, shortly before the application was made to that board for the warehouse project.

The court papers say he is 81 and had been trying for years to sell or develop his land off Toleman Road and Route 207 in order to "settle his estate."

Attorneys for Brach and Van Leeuwen claim that town officials "entered into a conspiracy" with neighbors of the development site to stop the project after Brach disclosed his interest in the property as part of the lawsuit the neighbors brought. They argue the rezoning of his property was unjustified and amounted to illegal "spot zoning."

More than $600,000 had been spent on the Stewart Hill plans by the time the moratorium was imposed. Brach cleared 16 acres of the property in 2020 but was stopped from removing more trees by a court injunction because of the neighbors' pending lawsuit.

cmckenna@th-record.com

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Developer claims anti-Hasidic bias in lawsuits over thwarted warehouse project - Times Herald-Record

Category: Hasidic
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