Kingston awaits ruling on suit
RUPCO challenges validity of protest petition that blocked housing plan
RUPCO’s lawsuit against the city over the Common Council’s rejection of the affordable housing agency’s request to rezone the former Alms House property awaits a judge’s final decision.
City Corporation Counsel Kevin Bryant on Thursday said papers have been fully submitted in the lawsuit and the parties are waiting on a decision from state Supreme Court Justice Richard Mott. The lawsuit was in response to a protest petition filed by city residents opposed to RUPCO’s request to rezone the former Alms House property at 300 Flatbush Ave. to accommodate a housing project.
On Aug. 18, RUPCO filed a lawsuit contending the Common Council acted improperly when it accepted the protest petition filed by neighbors as valid. Accepting the petition triggered a requirement that a “supermajority” of at least seven of the council’s nine members vote in favor of the rezoning in order for it to take effect. The vote on July 11 was 5-4, meaning the rezoning request was denied.
“We filed an Article 78 and declaratory judgement action against the city of Kingston, challenging the
validity of the protest petition and the requirement for a supermajority vote to approve the zoning change,” RUPCO Executive Director Kevin O’Connor wrote in an email Thursday. “We await a judge’s decision. Pending the outcome of that decision, we shall continue to evaluate our options.”
There was no indication of when Mott might hand down his ruling.
An Article 78 lawsuit is a legal challenge to the action of an administrative or governmental body.
RUPCO has proposed buying the property at 300 Flatbush Ave., which most recently housed Ulster County government offices, from the Ulster County Economic Development Agency
for $950,000, and creating a 66-unit apartment project there called Landmark Place. The agency had requested the Common Council rezone the property from single-family residential to multifamily residential, which led to the protest petition.
In the meantime, an amended rezoning request submitted by RUPCO remains in limbo.
Hours before the council’s July 11 vote, RUPCO filed an amended request asking aldermen to rezone a majority of the former Alms House property while leaving a 101-foot buffer from neighboring land owners unchanged. That amended petition went to the council’s Laws and Rules Committee,
where action was tabled. It has remained tabled since.
O’Connor previously has said that while state law allows for a protest petition by neighbors of a proposed rezoning to trigger a supermajority, it also states that if there is a 100-foot buffer between the site of the requested rezoning and neighbors, a protest petition cannot force a supermajority for approval of the rezoning. In that case, he said, a simple majority vote would be enough for approval.
RUPCO is proposing to create 34 apartments in the existing vacant Alms House structure and 32 more units in a four-story building it would construct on site. The housing would be open to individuals 55 and older, and more than half of the units would offer support services to a mix of homeless populations with special needs.
RUPCO’s purchase of the property was contingent upon the rezoning being approved.
Neighbors of the Flatbush Avenue property have raised concerns, among other issues, about impacts on the city’s sewer system and the safety of residents in the neighborhood after Landmark Place is filled.
Constructed in the 1870s as a place to care for the city’s poor, the Alms House later was used as a tuberculosis ward in the 1950s and later housed Ulster County’s Department of Health offices.