Mahwah August 15, 2012 THE VILLADOM TIMES IV • Page 3 Suffern settles Crossroads suit; two others remain by Frank J. McMahon The Village of Suffern’s lawsuit against the Township of Mahwah and Crossroads Developers Associates, LLC has been settled and is expected to be dismissed this month. Two remaining lawsuits related to the Crossroads application will be heard in Superior Court on Aug. 17. Crossroads Developers Associates, LLC is currently before the Mahwah Planning Board presenting its plans to construct a 600,000 square foot retail center with two big box stores, a tenplex theater, 200,000 square feet of retail shops along a pedestrian oriented corridor, and an athletic field. The 140-acre subject property is located at the intersection of Route 17 and Route 287 in Mahwah. The Village of Suffern filed suit against the Township of Mahwah, the mayor and council, the planning board, and Crossroads Developers Associates, LLC. The suit included objections to the potential negative impact of the development on that New York community. Suffern has settled its lawsuit against Crossroads Developers Associates, LLC for cash after the developer agreed to continue and extend the existing Ramapo River trail way through the retail mall project and to include that trail location in its site plans for the project that are currently being presented to the Mahwah Planning Board. The developer also agreed to reduce the predevelopment storm water runoff rate by a minimum of 20 percent and to include that reduction in the developer’s drainage plans for the site, and will pay the Village of Suffern $300,000, with $125,000 to be paid after the agreement was reached in June and $175,000 to be paid upon the approval of the project. As part of that agreement, the Village of Suffern agreed to file a stipulation of dismissal of the lawsuit against the Township of Mahwah. Terry Rice, the attorney for the Village of Suffern, confirmed the agreement with the developer last week. Rice advised Villadom TIMES that the signed stipulation of agreement was recently received from the developer and the stipulation of dismissal of the lawsuit against the Township of Mahwah would be filed soon. “The money will go to alleviate the issues that we raised,” Rice said, explaining the reasons Suffern settled the lawsuit. “It’s not tied to anything specific, but we raised various issues with respect to traffic and other concerns that we had and, rather than prolonging things and having further studies where there are, certainly, jurisdictional issues, we have the money so we can deal with the various issues affecting the village that we thought the proposed project might raise.” One of the two remaining lawsuits was filed by Crossroads Developers Associates, LLC against the Township of Mahwah and the mayor and council for repealing the three ordinances that were adopted on March 31, 2011 and rezoned the Crossroads property from office use to mixed retail use. The other pending suit was filed by the Committee to Stop Mahwah Mall, a group of Mahwah residents who oppose the application. That suit was filed against the Township of Mahwah, the mayor and township council, the township clerk, and the developer. In that lawsuit, the group raised several objections to the rezoning of the property, including one that involved a conflict of interest by a township councilman who participated in the discussions and the vote on the rezoning. The suit also claims the township clerk erroneously rejected the protest petition that was filed by the group, which would have required a supermajority vote of the council (five affirmative votes) to adopt the rezoning ordinance. The lawsuit also claims the developer played an active role in initiating the township’s reconsideration of rezoning of the Crossroads property, which was contrary to state law. The two remaining lawsuits will be heard by Superior Court Judge Alexander Carver, who previously declined to consider a civil complaint filed on this matter by the township’s planning board earlier this year. The planning board had sought a declaratory judgment as to whether the board has the jurisdiction to hear the Crossroads site plan application. The board had hoped to get a determination as to whether an exception that is permitted in the law that governs the zoning under which the Crossroads application must be (continued on page 23)