This one is from a local Elmont group ….
It joins the Village of Floral park’s suit filed a week ago…
The Village argue’s for a smaller project in size…
The The Belmont Park Community Coalition argues about legality of the whole project itself by the developers…
There is a report that the ground breaking for the project will be tomorrow….
Site clean-up and preparation has been going on for weeks…
Construction could begin immediately after the ground breaking if no court stops it…
A coalition of Elmont civic groups have filed a lawsuit to stop the $1.3 billion arena/hotel/retail project at Belmont Park.
The hybrid lawsuit, filed Saturday in State Supreme Court in Nassau County, challenges the project’s environmental review process as well as the legality of the redevelopment’s origin under urban renewal statutes.
The new suit follows another filed against the project by the Village of Floral Park earlier this month and comes two days before official groundbreaking ceremonies for the redevelopment that aims to bring a 19,000-seat arena, hotel and 350,000-square-foot retail center to 43 acres of the state-owned racetrack property.
Similar to the Floral Park suit, the Elmont suit also claims the state’s environmental review of the project was flawed and did not properly address major issues like traffic, “cumulative impacts” and the safety of local residents. The Article 78 action seeks to stop work at the Belmont Park site and asks that the publicly owned park property not be conveyed to private developers.
Plaintiffs in the new lawsuit claim they represent about 3,000 households in the Elmont area and include the leaders of the Belmont Park Community Coalition, Elmont Manor Tudor Civic Association, Elmont Parkhurst Civic Association, Elmont Locustwood/Gotham Civic Association and Elmont civic leader Aubrey Phillips. The defendants in the suit include Empire State Development, the Hempstead Town supervisor, the Nassau County executive, developers New York Arena Partners, the state Franchise Oversight Board and the Water Authority of Western Nassau.
“The State of New York plans to take up a major redevelopment project for our community,” Lori Halop, of the Belmont Park Community Coalition, said in a written statement. “Unfortunately, the state has chosen to ignore the surrounding communities and our concerns about the current redevelopment proposal.”
Besides its claims that the state’s environmental review of the project was deficient, the newly filed lawsuit also asserts that Empire State Development shouldn’t be able to operate under the state’s Urban Development Corporation Act to embark on the arena project, since it relies on the area being blighted and having “substantial and persistent unemployment and under employment,” which the plaintiffs insist Elmont is not….
Note…
After the Amazon walk away?
New York State Gov. Cuomo is pushing hard for this project….
Update….
There WAS a ground breaking cerimony held to day for the project…
I’ll have a post later…