POST OFFICE PLAN OPPONENTS DROP LAWSUIT, CLAIM VICTORY

The Village Keepers lawsuit against the Township claiming that proper procedures were not followed in approving the former Maplewood Village post office redevelopment plan has been dropped, according to a notice on the group's website that declares the Township has complied with its wishes.

The notice, posted this evening, states, in part:

Fellow Village Keepers, the Township finally has done what we have been seeking for many weeks and has referred the central questions about the old post office site to the Maplewood Village Alliance and the Planning Board. The litigation is over. The defendants will be doing all that we asked for in the complaint. We can now withdraw the legal action that we never wanted to file in the first place and keep all of this out of the courts.

Read the entire notice HERE.

You may recall the lawsuit challenged the Maplewood Village Alliance procedures for approving the plan and sparked the Township Committee to approve up to $10,000 in Township funds for a potential defense

As the Village Keeper's announcement states:

The ordinance (see article B6) passed by the Township Committee on December 16, 2014 — based on the Historical Preservation Element of the town’s 2008 Master Plan (the town’s “Constitution”)—states that buildings in the Village cannot be demolished unless the owner can show that repurposing the existing structure would cause it to experience “significant financial hardship.”

We are eager to hear who will testify, under oath, that such is the case. Most importantly, we are eager to hear what the town and the developer claim are the standards for such a determination, since every conversation we have had with planners and developers suggests that adaptive reuse of the existing structure likely makes more sense financially, aesthetically, and environmentally.

Asked to comment, Mayor Vic Deluca stated via email: 

The Township has not been officially notified and on the advice of our counsel does not have a comment. 

A Maplewood Vilage Alliance meeting and hearing on the issue is set for July 22.