Despite a court order to do so, the White Plains Common Council did not vote Feb. 1 on an application to redevelop the former Ridgeway Country Club as the French-American School of New York”™s new campus.
Rather, the city announced it would appeal the Jan. 20 ruling from state Supreme Court Judge Joan B. Lefkowitz that ordered the council to vote on a 2014 site plan and special permit application by Feb. 1.
The special permit calls for the closing of a portion of Hathaway Lane, a street adjacent to the site. At its Aug. 5 special meeting, the common council voted 4-3 in favor, but a supermajority of five votes was needed for the measure to pass.
White Plains Mayor Thomas M. Roach said Feb. 1 that without the road closing the application cannot be approved.
“That”™s what”™s happening tonight,” Roach said. “So, nothing.”
Groans could be heard from meeting attendees, one of whom said “we”™re not all lawyers,” and asked for further clarification on the council”™s decision.
Roach said the city”™s attorneys advised them to appeal the court order, adding they disagreed with the decision. The city and FASNY are scheduled to appear next in court on Feb. 11.
FASNY”™s planned $60 million, five-building school with five athletic fields would consolidate its three schools that are now in rented facilities in Scarsdale, Mamaroneck and Larchmont.
In the ruling, Lefkowitz ordered the vote from the seven-member council was to be decided by a supermajority, rather than the simple majority vote that FASNY had requested.
The judge had denied the school’s application for a special permit to close a portion of Hathaway Lane, a road bordering the campus that would be used as a main entrance for visitors.
Lefkowitz also barred a group opposing the FASNY project, the Gedney Neighborhood Association, from entering the case. The group of property owners has sent numerous letters to city officials since 2010 voicing concerns with the project. Made up of 455 households, the association has taken issue with the potential closing of a public street and the adverse environmental impact that could follow from the school”™s construction. The former country club property is in an area zoned for single-family residences.
Gedney Association President John Sheehan said he was not upset by Lefkowitz’s ruling against the organization and was optimistic about the outcome of the battle between FASNY and its neighbors.
“We were very pleased by the decision,” Sheehan said. “Pleased, but not surprised.”
Sheehan said he saw FASNY’s effort to overturn a city law that requires a supermajority vote of the common council to close a public road as far too ambitious and impractical.
“I expect a 7-0 vote against it,” Sheehan said prior to what he believed was the common council’s vote on the FASNY plan. “The property is too big and too dense for open roads in the middle of a low-density residential neighborhood.”
Andrea Colombel, chairperson of the FASNY board of trustees, in a statement said she was “pleased” with the court decision.
“Simply put, the time has come to move forward with the project,” she said. “We look forward to becoming a part of the extensive and diverse educational opportunities for which White Plains is so well known and respected.”
FASNY, represented by attorneys Daniel M. Richmond and Michael D. Zarin of the White Plains law firm Zarin & Steinmetz, asked the state Supreme Court to throw out the Aug 5 vote and instead approve its site plan and special permit application. White Plains Mayor Thomas M. Roach and the council are represented by Wilson Elser Moskowitz Edelman & Dicker LLP in the case.
The school”™s project was first proposed in 2011 after it bought the 130-acre former club. School facilities would be concentrated on 53 acres, while Greens to Green Conservancy at FASNY, a publicly accessible nature preserve, would be on the remaining 78 acres.
The common council voted 6-1 in late 2013 to adopt the school’s State Environmental Quality Review Act findings statement.
FASNY said on its website that the new campus would allow for a maximum of 1,200 students and roughly 225 to 250 employees; the school currently has 850 students enrolled.
“The existing leased spaces no long serve the long-term mission of FASNY and would not allow for the planned increase in enrollment,” the school wrote in its plans.
