Court rejects second challenge to Port Chester Home Depot development.

For the second time in four months, a State Supreme Court Justice in Westchester County has upheld the environmental review process conducted by the Village of Port Chester in connection with a proposed Home Depot store to be built on an approximately eight-acre tract located along the Port Chester-Rye border.

The petitioners, a group of citizens from the neighboring City of Rye and Village of Port Chester, raised legal issues that were similar to the legal issues that had been rejected by the Court previously in connection with a lawsuit brought by the City of Rye.

Home Depot applied to the Village of Port Chester for a rezoning in order to build a 101,000 square-foot store and 18,000 square-foot garden center in 1994. After completing an Environmental Impact Statement prepared pursuant to the State Environmental Quality Review Act, the Village approved the rezoning in 1995.

The citizens group sought to block the approval in court, asserting "procedural irregularities" in the environmental review process, "spot zoning," and that the Village Board had been improperly "predisposed" to approve the proposed store.

On January 14, State Supreme Court Justice James R. Cowhey issued a decision dismissing the lawsuit. As a threshold matter, Justice Cowhey found that the citizens lacked legal "standing" to maintain the challenge because "they have not demonstrated that their property is either the subject of the challenged determination or lies in close proximity to the subject property," and thus could not demonstrate that they would suffer an environmental injury that was different from that of the public at large.

The Court went on to find that, even if the citizens had standing, their substantive challenge had no merit. Referencing his earlier dismissal of Rye's challenge to the project, Justice Cowhey rejected petitioners, arguments, noting that the administrative record demonstrated "that the project was consistent with all other relevant planning documents evidenced to be in effect in the Village," and that the petitioners had "been given an adequate opportunity to be heard and voice its concerns regarding this project in accordance with the law."

The Court concluded that the Port Chester Village Board complied both procedurally and substantively with the requirements of SEQRA.

Two years earlier, Justice Cowhey had ruled in Rye's favor in connection with its challenge to a prior application process by Home Depot to develop a retail outlet at the site.

David Paget, an environmental attorney at Sire, Paget & Riesel, P.C. and lead counsel for Home Depot, applauded the dismissal by Justice Cowhey of "what was essentially a duplicative challenge to a project that had already been upheld by the same Court, and had been subject to an extremely thorough and exhaustive environmental review process conducted by Port Chester."

Paget also noted "that the Court's rejection of the citizens' bare assertions of a unique interest may foreshadow a return to greater judicial scrutiny of the issue of a party's standing to bring environmental challenges."