Lebovits to develop Patrick Farm without ASH
St. Lawrence backs away from his Adult Student Housing

April 25, 2008 The Journal News reported this morning that "Ramapo Supervisor Christopher St. Lawrence and Terry Rice, the attorney for the developers, said in separate interviews that adult-student housing would not be built on the [Patrick Farm] property."

The Lawyers Made us Do It
The outrageous political giveaway, known as Adult Student Housing, began in June of 2004 when Ramapo Supervisor and his board crafted a new kind of spot-zoning for the Town. Submitting to a kind of litigious extortion, they created four zones where something called Adult Student Housing would allow high-density housing. They had been threatened with RLUIPA lawsuits by the developers, and rather than fight, they caved. The four sites included Grandview Avenue (the old Nike base), Highview Road west of College Road, Spruce Road, and Patrick Farm.

The Patrick Farm property is 220 acres located at the corner of Routes 306 and 202 in Pomona. The owner/developers are Yechiel Lebovits (and his sons Aron and Chaim) and Abraham Moscovits of Scenic Development, LLC (formerly Scenic Properties of Brooklyn, LLC).

By folding to the demands of the developers, St. Lawrence’s ASH designation would have allowed 16 apartments on one acre where the normal zoning would only permit one house to be built on two acres. This new housing, because of its religious use as "student" housing would be tax exempt with the only requirement that 10% of the residences be set aside for study areas.

It should be noted that the villages of Airmont and Pomona have been sued by developers using the RLUIPA legislation as a hammer, and both municipalities have chosen to fight the applications in court. Ramapo, which has far greater economic resources to take on this kind of suit, offered an accommodation that exists nowhere else. It has not gone unnoticed that the Supervisor’s political base was strongly in favor of spot zoning these ASH sites.

A New Plan
Yesterday, Journal reporter James Walsh was told by St. Lawrence and Lebovits attorney Rice that Patrick Farm would be developed without the ASH downzoning. "The property would be ringed by single-family houses on 1-acre sites, and multifamily housing would be built in the interior."

Also, they said, "There would be 24 townhouses for volunteer firefighters and ambulance crew members near the Monsey Fire Department’s substation off Route 306."

The residences would be on the tax rolls, and no Yeshiva and accessory housing were in the new plans.

The new application from Lebovits and Moscovits might be submitted to the planning board in late May or early June.

A Victory for the People
Robert Rhodes, Chairman of Preserve Ramapo, told the Journal reporter, "This is really a great victory for the people." Preserve Ramapo has been fighting the RLUIPA legislation and St. Lawrence’s Adult Student Housing zones for four years, calling for the repeal of both through the last two elections.

James Barnard, an activist who has been at the center of the effort to incorporate Ladentown, is encouraged by the decision, but like Rhodes, he is cautious. "I would have to see the plans and get some idea of total population, because that’s what impacts the environment."

The Preserve Ramapo chairman warned, "We’ll have to watch the guy like a hawk," referring to the developer. Besides the spot downzoning demands and political arm-twisting, Lebovits and Moscovits were cited on May 17, 2004 by the N.Y. District of the Army Corps of Engineers for violations of federal law concerning waterways. A cease and desist order was issued after the developer, without filing site plans, began to clear the land, damaging federally and state-protected wetlands, improperly depositing fill, draining waterways, and altering the course of a stream that feeds the headwaters of the Mahwah River. The developers were ordered to "restore to natural contour" the altered areas of the wetlands.
(Photo below shows original violations in 2005.)

Recent aerial photos done for Preserve Ramapo show that the work has not been done. It would seem the developers are still in defiance of the federal order, and it’s not just a little disingenuous for St. Lawrence to claim in today’s story that "the town was intent on confining storm-water drainage to the property and on protecting wetlands on the site." The fact is the DEC has ordered the Town of Ramapo to oversee the repair to the property done by developers, as described by the Army Corps of Engineers. Repairs for damage to the dam, the drainage ditch work, and other contour shaping do not show up in the recent photos. Apparently, in the chromo-challenged world of the Supervisor green looks a lot more like the brown of a partially drained lake bed.

Big Questions Remain
Quite a few questions, actually. The site plans that will be submitted for the Patrick Farm property will help answer the first question. If not ASH, then what’s actually in store for the Patrick Farm property? The plans will detail the number of dwellings and capacities. Then there will be an entirely new Environmental Impact Study. But what about the other three ASH sites?

St. Lawrence told James Walsh, "Adult-student housing is a flashpoint, and we have to take that flashpoint away."

Does this belated enlightenment by the supervisor mean that the other sites will not be developed as spot-zoned for 90% residential use--10% religious use? Is ASH dead on Highview and the site across from Brick Church cemetery on 306? The implication is there, but will the ASH wording be expunged from the Ramapo Master Plan?

The Nike-base ASH site has been built, and is now in Federal court as four villages are still fighting St. Lawrence’s capitulation. What effect will this current reversal have in that court case, if any? What’s going to happen to the Grandview complex? (Shown below during construction. Completed today, it stands empty awaiting the court decision.)

Why did the Patrick Farm developers Moscovits and Lebovits agree to this decision to deep-six ASH? Has an arrangement been made? And what about the other developers? Will they accept the change, or will they resuscitate their RLUIPA threats?

And finally, what’s going on with the Supervisor? After years of observing the decisions of this purely political being, I am sure this was not just a personal epiphany. Is there a political office somewhere in the county that he is now looking at. Is this an attempt to mend some fences before appealing to a larger political audience than the bloc? If so, I would suggest that the repairs are more likely to resemble burying of bodies rather than nailing and painting a few slats on a fence.

Michael Castelluccio

Read James Walsh's coverage for The Journal News here.