The proposed 380 unit Sailor”™s Cove project on the waterfront in Kingston is facing trouble on legal and procedural grounds, with the developers filing a lawsuit against the city and, in a separate matter, city planning officials recommending against accepting the developer”™s final environmental impact statement.
The project in its current configuration could be doomed, but city officials hold out hope that after a June 14 planning board meeting developers will abide by city and state requirements and allow planners to recommend the process continue.
Developers say they are frustrated. “It is really a shame what is going on with city of Kingston,” said Enrique Mazada, operating partner in the development company, 771 Polaris Inc. of Ohio, which he says has been seeking approvals for the Sailor”™s Cove project for eight years. “I have to do what I have to do, I have to respond to partners, investors, etc.”
Mazada said he could not discuss matters in detail: “My lawyer put a gag order on me.”
His attorney, James Sweeney of Goshen, said he has initiated two legal actions, one to recoup some $90,000 he claims the city overcharged 771 Polaris for consultants the city used at the developer”™s expense to parse their plans.
The other suit, he said, is an Article 78 proceeding filed June 5, to compel the city to complete the final environmental document (FEIS), which Sweeney said, has been in city hands since Nov. 30 of last year. Â The return date for the city to respond is late June, he said, and no judge has been assigned yet.
But city of Kingston planning Director Suzanne Cahill said that it is the developers who are failing to provide key information necessary to allow city officials to assess their project. She said, for example, that developers have recently changed the number of units in their proposal, from the long-agreed-upon 380 residential units up to about 430 units.
“The location is a very prominent waterfront location,” said Cahill. “It is a substantial project on the Hudson River, so we are so we are looking to protect the integrity of not only our community, but the waterfront itself.”
She said substantive comments from public hearings on the draft environmental documents were not addressed by the developer, and said that the developer had not addressed the need for visual simulations showing how the waterfront would look after project build out. She said that state Department of State officials “are adamant about maintaining the visual integrity” of the shoreline and said the project would not be allowed to proceed without the required visual simulations. Additionally, she said Sailor”™s Cove documents fail to address Kingston”™s local waterfront development plan.
Cahill said Kingston has a track record of working with developers, pointing to the approvals received by the much larger Hudson Landing mixed-use development, with some 1,200 units planned on land immediately north of the Sailor”™s Cove project. She said that Hudson Landing developers have been authorized to begin grading their property to start creating the developments internal road network.
