A rival Uptown real estate investor’s legal onslaught against the Kingstonian continued last week with an Article 78 petition in state Supreme Court targeting the City of Kingston Planning Board’s decision to grant final site plan approval for the mixed-use project in the Stockade District.

The action filed on Nov. 16 is the 15th case filed against the city and developers by LLCs controlled by William Gottlieb Real Estate and principal Neil Bender.

Last month, the planning board signed off on plans to build 143 units of housing, a parking garage, a boutique hotel and commercial space on the site of a municipal parking lot and adjacent space bounded by Schwenk Drive, North Front Street and Fair Street Extension. The unanimous vote ended a four-year approval process that included reviews by the city’s Heritage Area Commission, Historic Preservation Landmarks Commission, state historic preservation officials and the Kingston Common Council.

Opponents of the project have contended that the development of market-rate housing at the site will speed gentrification in the city. Others objected to a Payment in Lieu of Taxes agreement that will allow developers to waive $28 million in city, county and school taxes over the next 25 years. Proponents of the plan, including many Uptown business owners, say the project will bring an infusion of new consumers to the neighborhood while providing public benefits like parking and a public plaza at the site.

No opponent has loomed larger than Bender, whose company owns six properties in Uptown Kingston along with an extensive real estate portfolio in Manhattan and holdings in Rhinebeck. Since 2018, LLCs linked to the Uptown properties have filed 15 Article 78 petitions targeting various aspects of the approval process. Nine of the Article 78 actions have been dismissed while six, including the latest, remain before the courts. (An Article 78 motion is a request from a plaintiff to a judge asking the judge to nullify a government action on procedural grounds.)

In a change from previous litigation, the Bender-controlled LLCs have engaged high-profile Albany law firm E. Stewart Jones Hacker Murphy LLP. Previously, the litigation against the Kingstonian was handled by Poughkeepsie-based Rodenhausen, Chale & Polidoro. Kingston City School District Trustee Jim Shaughnessy, acting in his capacity at a private citizen, and his daughter, Larissa Shaughnessy, also appear as plaintiffs in the suit and are represented by Poughkeepsie-based attorney Wayne Thompson.

The petition contends that the planning board made a number of key oversights in granting the Kingstonian site plan approval. Among the missteps cited are the board’s failure to assess a $417,000 recreation fee that, plaintiffs contend, should have been required for the approval, and a decision to give developers JM Development LLC two years from the time of approval to obtain a building permit rather than the standard 120 days. Plaintiffs’ attorney Benjamin F. Neidl also argues that the board violated its own criteria for granting site plan approval by failing to include a pedestrian walkway over Schwenk Drive connecting the site to Kingston Plaza.

The petition also claims that the board should not have signed off on the project while key challenges to some key components of the project remain before the courts. The petition includes a lengthy description of the Kingston Stockade Historic District, where the Kingstonian is located, to illustrate the supposed harm to the neighborhood’s character that would occur if it’s built.

“The project is completely inappropriate for the location and the board has breached a number of procedural strictures on its way to approving the project,” the petition reads.

Contacted for comment Monday, Barbara Graves-Poller, the city’s top attorney, was unimpressed by the latest litigation. “I have not had an opportunity to review the pleading carefully, but the claimants admit that their allegations ‘overlap with arguments that Petitioners previously asserted’ in prior unsuccessful lawsuits,” Graves-Poller wrote in an email to Kingston Wire. “It's hard to understand what purpose — aside from sheer waste of City resources — this type of litigation serves.”