HUDSON, NY — The Ulster County Supreme Court on January 24 dismissed most of a lawsuit brought by developer Shalom Lamm against the Town of Mamakating Planning Board for a determination that was made after the town and the Village of Bloomingburg merged their planning functions.

The arrangement was dissolved in July of 2016 after pro-Lamm officials were elected to the village board. Before the dissolution, however, the Mamakating planning board voted to rescind various approvals to Lamm’s Villages at Chestnut Ridge development.

Lamm, who has since been arrested and charged with voting fraud in the village, brought an Article 78 lawsuit declaring a number of reasons why the town planning board did not have the authority to rescind the approvals. One reason was that because Lamm had already spent  millions of dollars on the project he therefore had a vested right in it. The project includes 396 proposed townhouses on 198 acres; according to the court decision, “51 units have been built, 29 have been sold, 45 have certificates of deposit, and a further 64 are in various stages of construction.”

The planning board said that it did have the authority to pass a resolution to rescind the approvals because earlier in the year an “executive summary” was made public, which showed Lamm’s real plan was to build far more units than he revealed in his initial application. His real plan was to create housing for perhaps 5,000 families.

The court wrote, “The Resolution relies upon its recalculation of community impacts with respect to, [among other things] water use, wastewater treatment capacity, school aged children, traffic and transportation needs, based upon 5.5 and 10 people per unit, to conclude that the projections outpace the SEQRA findings in both events. Further, it finds that the ‘material misrepresentations and false statements in the Environmental Impact Statement, impugn the integrity of the 2009-2010 project review and require rescission of the land-use approvals.’”

As to the vested rights question, the court wrote that while in this matter it generally has to give great weight to the assertions of the developer, but “a motion to dismiss may be granted where the documentary evidence ‘utterly refutes’ a plaintiff’s allegations, conclusively establishing a defense as a matter of law.” It further wrote, “when a permit is wrongfully issued in the first instance, the vested rights doctrine does not prevent the municipality from revoking the permit to correct its error.”

Therefore, most of the causes of action were dismissed except for part of one cause, in which the documents suggest the town planning board sought to have approval of future applications for the project if new applications are submitted. Future approvals would now come from the re-constituted Village of Bloomingburg Planning Board.

It’s not clear how the future of the development will be impacted now that federal prosecutor Preet Bharara has indicted Lamm and his associates on voter fraud charges. Lamm is out on bail.