The Town of Mamakating, New York decided Monday night to go to court if necessary to stop the adjoining Village of Bloomingburg from issuing certificates of occupancy for completed units in Modern Orthodox developer Shalom Lamm’s 396-unit high-density hasidic townhouse development.
Mamakating To Sue Bloomingburg Over Modern Orthodox Developer’s Hasidic Development
Shmarya Rosenberg • FailedMessiah.com
The Town of Mamakating, New York decided Monday night to go to court if necessary to stop the adjoining Village of Bloomingburg from issuing certificates of occupancy for completed units in Modern Orthodox developer Shalom Lamm’s 396-unit high-density hasidic townhouse development, Chestnut Ridge, the Times Herald-Record reported.
The development was originally pitched to the village by a prominent local non-Jewish front man secretly working for Lamm and was presented as a low-density vacation and retirement community to be built around a 9-hole golf course.
But Chestnut Ridge was really meant to be a high-density development that would be marketed to Satmar hasidim as a new Satmar “shtetl,” Kiryas Yated Lev, that would put almost 2,000 Satmar hasidim in Bloomingburg – which had a population of 420 people at last count.
Bloomingburg sits in the foothills of the Catskill Mountains in a predominately rural area.
Its adjoining neighbor Mamakating had a population of 12,085 in 2010.
Bloominburg’s planning and zoning was willingly transferred to Mamakating’s control last year because the tiny village was unable to keep up with the inspections necessary to handle Lamm’s construction or to adequately enforce zoning rules and codes.
Mamakating Supervisor Bill Herrmann said Lamm has still not complied with all the requirements of the planning board, including failing to comply with planning board rules regarding water supply and getting the necessary approvals for location of Lamm’s development’s well.
“We are not going to stand by and let anything slide by that’s not proper,” Herrmann reportedly said.
Bloomingburg’s attorney Steve Mogel agreed that Lamm has not fully complied with the planning board. But he said Bloomingburg and Mamaking disagree over exactly what Lamm has failed to do properly.
“Ultimately, we may well need the intervention of the court [to sort this out],” Mogel reportedly said.
Monday night, both Mamakating’s town board and planning board passed resolutions compelling the town to file an Article 78 lawsuit against Bloomingburg if the village issues certificates of occupancy for the 48 Lamm townhomes that have been completed so far.
Last fall, Lamm filed a $25 million lawsuit against Mamakating and Bloomingburg last year alleging anti-Semitism and bias against his development and its planned occupants.
Mamakating and Bloomingburg responded by filing a racketeering lawsuit against Lamm in April.
While Bloomingburg had no known hasidic residents before Lamm began his development plans, it does a have a non-Orthodox Jewish community as does Mamakating, and a number of prominent Lamm opponents are local non-Orthodox Jews.
Lamm opponents have consistently insisted their opposition to Lamm’s development is not based on the religion of its planned occupants. Instead, they say Lamm’s deceitful dumping of a high-density development on a bucolic rural area is what they oppose.
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