The French-American School of New York did not achieve the required super majority vote on its plan for a campus in Wednesday night”™s White Plains Common Council special meeting, and the school has vowed to take the city to court over the issue that has been debated for years.
The vote Wednesday night attracted about 100 members of the public who filled the council chambers and spilled into the adjacent hallway.
The split was 4-3 in favor of closing Hathaway Lane and a special permit application for site plan approval was tabled. If the ordinances had moved forward it would have helped pave the way for the bilingual school’s planned $60 million campus consolidation on the former site of the Ridgeway Country Club.
The French-American School has campuses in Scarsdale, Mamaroneck and Larchmont and has spent nearly five years trying to get city approval to combine them on 131 acres of environmentally sensitive land near the Gedney Farms neighborhood.
Mayor Thomas M. Roach was joined by council members John Kirkpatrick, John M. Martin and Beth N. Smayda in voting for the discontinuation of a portion of Hathaway Lane as part of FASNY’s plan. Council members Nadine Hunt-Robinson, Dennis E. Krolian and Milagros Lecuona voted against the partial road closure, citing, among other things, traffic and emergency response safety problems.
In response to the threat of a lawsuit, Roach said he would “vigorously and zealously defend the interests of the city.”
