Judge orders city vote on FASNY project in White Plains

A state Supreme Court judge this month ordered the White Plains Common Council to vote on the French-American School of New York’s long-stalled application to redevelop the former Ridgeway Country Club property as a school campus and nature park.

In her Jan. 20 ruling, Judge Joan B. Lefkowitz ordered a vote on a site plan and special permit be held no later than its next regularly scheduled meeting, which is Feb. 1. The Common Council  the lead agency, held a special meeting Jan. 25, but the FASNY project was not listed on the meeting agenda.

In a 17-page 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 council tabled a vote on the site plan and special permit applications at an Aug. 5 special meeting, which led FASNY officials to file the lawsuit.

The judge 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 local property owners has sent numerous letters to city officials since 2010 voicing its concerns with the project. Made up of 455 households, the association has taken issue with the potential discontinuance 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 after the judge’s decision to deny the school’s proposal to close Hathaway Lane from its intersection with Ridgeway to 57 Hathaway Lane.

“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 of the common council’s imminent 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.”

The court order comes nearly six months after FASNY came one vote shy of receiving approval to close a portion of Hathaway Lane. At its Aug. 5 special meeting, the common council voted 4-3 in favor of closing a portion of the road; a supermajority of five votes was needed for the resolution to pass.

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 that vote and instead approve its site plan and special permit application. White Plains Mayor Thomas M. Roach and the common council are represented by Wilson Elser Moskowitz Edelman & Dicker LLP in the case.

The project to construct a $60 million, five-building school with five athletic fields was first proposed in 2011, and the common council voted 6-1 in late 2013 to adopt the school’s State Environmental Quality Review Act findings statement.

FASNY wants to consolidate its three schools in rented facilities in Scarsdale, Mamaroneck and Larchmont on a White Plains campus that would include an elementary school, secondary school and nursery school. The purchased the 130-acre Ridgeway Country Club proerty in January 2011. School facilities would be concentrated on 53 acres, while Greens to Green Conservancy at FASNY, a publicly accessible nature preserve, would be built on the remaining 78 acres.

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.