Residents, city, Leggat settle on courthouse, clearing way for an appeal of development
Development of a former East Cambridge courthouse faces a likely residents’ appeal.
The city, state, real estate developers Leggat McCall Partners and five local residents and neighbors have agreed to settle the outstanding claims in a lawsuit about redevelopment of the former Edward J. Sullivan Courthouse in East Cambridge.
The settlement means the lead plaintiff, Michael Hawley, will be able to pursue an appeal of the Land Court’s May 19 decision in the Massachusetts Appeals Court.
Settlement papers were filed Tuesday and today, and were agreed to by all of the parties. They appeared on the court’s electronic docket today. The full terms of the settlements are confidential, so it is not clear whether money changed hands. For purposes of the settlement, the two consolidated cases were treated separately.
The first case, Daniel Hill versus Cambridge Planning Board, was dismissed in its entirety. That means Hill, a local lawyer whose office is across the street from the courthouse, will not be able to appeal the case, said Kevin O’Flaherty, Leggat’s attorney.
In the second case, Hawley et al. versus Cambridge Planning Board, Hawley and his fellow plaintiffs agreed to dismiss their claims in the lawsuit other than the question of whether the courthouse was a “lawful nonconforming structure.” Judge Robert Foster of the land court ruled in May that it was indeed a lawful nonconforming structure, a win for the developer and the city’s Planning Board, which voted to grant a special permit to allow development. Foster’s ruling was a ruling on “partial summary judgment,” which decided one portion of the cases where the parties agreed upon the facts but did not dispose of all cases in their entirety.
The Hawley settlement says the plaintiffs – Michael Hawley, Graham Gund, Marie Saccoccio and Roger Summons – reserve their right to appeal with respect to the nonconformity issue.
Hawley said that “the rest of the stuff was noise … the nonconformity issue is the important one.” He looks forward to the appeal, he said.
Regarding the May ruling on the main issue of the case, Hawley said in an email that “it maintains the status quo and simply sides with the bucks. The defense claims that everything built by government in excess of zoning should be grandfathered … It’s bad enough when the government creates a fiasco, but perpetuating such a mistake is wrong. This is the antithesis of enlightened planning or sensible zoning.”
Settling the remaining claims in the case allows the nonconformity issue to reach the appeals court several months earlier than it otherwise would. O’Flaherty said that any of the remaining plaintiffs could file an appeal, and that they would have 30 days to do so from the date the judge formally closes the case.
A status conference in the case is scheduled for Monday morning, so it is likely the 30-day appeals clock will begin some time after.
Hill declined to comment, saying the terms of the settlement were confidential, and Mark Bobrowski, Hawley’s attorney, could not be reached. The City of Cambridge did not return requests for comment.
So how many more times does Mr. Hawley and his lot need to hear the same judgement (or agreement of said judgement) before he finally gives up this ego-driven exercise?
The sooner this appeal is heard and the ruling reconfirmed, the better it will be for the neighborhood to finally move on.
Many people are rooting for Mr. Hawley and the neighborhood plaintiffs — myself included.
Joe, That’s not an appropriate way to talk about your neighbors in a public forum. State your opinion about the case and move on. There has been altogether way too much animosity caused in the neighborhood by this. Let’s move on from that.
Joe: It’s been pretty clear from the start of this action that the decisive conclusion would come from the Appeals Court or the SJC, and I believe both parties have strongly suggested they were prepared to take the case to that level.
So it is certainly no surprise that Hawley has confirmed his intention to appeal here.
Also, appeals court judges are much more likely to overturn precedents than trial court judges. So if we accept the framing that the Durkin case was bad precedent and has been consistently misapplied in other cases, that sort of reversal (more like declaration of inapplicability) is much more likely to come from the appellate level than the trial level.
So, consequently, I don’t think it’s reasonable to frame this as “hearing the same judgement”; Hawley is doing what he said he would do.
I would add that during the special permit public hearings, some people advocated for the granting of the permits as the quickest way to see action on the site, and disregarded Hawley’s clear statements at the time that a grant of the special permit would result in extended litigation. I hope the calculus of apparent expedition at the time didn’t taint the ultimate outcome.
Mr. Aiello:
I don’t mind your ad hominem sniping. Knock yourself out.
But: the issue here is precedent, and it is important.
The defense claims that every outsized government creation — anything: a heliport, a missile silo, a storage bunker, a mile-high Dark Tower of Mordor, or this Courthouse — should be grandfathered. It doesn’t matter how big it is, how much it exceeds zoning, how wrong it may be, how corrupt it was. The defense asserts these sorts of government flops can be claimed as grandfathered for exploitation by private developers. And the citizens simply need to suck it up, and shrug, as if zoning never existed.
Many believe that is fundamentally wrong. This is not about “me” or the named plaintiffs. It’s about the hundreds and hundreds of neighbors who have voiced their staunch opposition, and fought hard. It’s about the larger principle here. When government leaves detritus behind, it doesn’t “automagically” get grandfathered and it shouldn’t have to leave a permanent scar on a city: city planners should be able to insist that these messes be cleaned up and brought into compliance so that wise civic planning can be done.
If we were just to sit back, as you are, and say, “Oh, well, guess there’s nothing we can do about it” and, worse, leave a precedent on the books that implies the Sullivan Courthouse is grandfathered and everything else should be, too, that would encourage patterns like this everywhere.
You may not be aware that this building was so costly, so corrupt, that it essentially bankrupted Middlesex county. The State abolished Middlesex county as a result. The Courthouse could have been the poster child for the Ward Commission, which ripped into $18b in corrupt construction projects (like the UMass Boston campus), and whose 12-volume report began:
“In Massachusetts, we have learned that corruption is a way of life.”
Several state senators went to jail over these scandals, as did construction goons from companies like MBM.
The good people who had the unpleasant job of raking through all the corrupt deals would be rolling in their graves if they could see what is happening now. It’s an echo of the same corrupt process that created this mistake in the first place.
Finally, from a process standpoint, this bump was not unexpected. Land Court is a coin toss and tends to uphold the status quo. This judge had a previous career as an attorney representing big developers, and this ruling is what that sort of professional would hope for. It all hinges on the screwy Durkin case, which we have argued all along, is being grossly misconstrued. In fact, it is a measure of the desperation of the defense and the city that they need to try to extrapolate from that case to somehow claim the Courthouse as a lawful nonconformity. Once you accept that it is not, and that temporary government immunity may allow such things to be created but doesn’t persist in any way, doesn’t “rub off” on the building, and isn’t “grandfathered,” all the case law falls into line, and you can begin to sensibly plan when anomalies like this arise.
John Hawkinson is correct.
Even if Land Court had ruled for the plaintiffs, it’s a certainty that the defense would have appealed and we’d just as surely find ourselves in the Appeals Court or SJC.
And for that matter, even if the Planning Board had denied to grant the permit, it is highly likely that litigation would have resulted, and we’d have been dragged into it.
This is simply the way the process goes.
Peace Be Unto You.
There is another concern and perspective, about the Sullivan Court House, that hasn’t been address as of yet. As a matter of fact the authorities have circumvented federal mandates to do so. Every year and every five years, the Department of Housing and Community development (DHCD) is federally require to comply with an Annual Plan, one segment of a Five Year Consolidated Plan/Report. The DHCD is a federal “Moving to Work (MTW)” entity, and federal mandates require it to file these plans. The plans require the DHCD to report on and address homelessness concerns, and issues. It is also required to report the availability of government properties that can be utilized in addressing homelessness. Under the Federal Title V Program of the McKinney-Vento Homelessness ACT of 198t,the DHCD or Commonwealth, is require to let the federal government know that the Sullivan Building was vacant.
DHCD failed to included mention of the Sullivan Court House as unused, underutilized, surplus land, that was available to address homelessness, it failed to in violation of “Housing and Urban Development (HUD)” Annual and Consolidated Plan,” mandates and requirements pertaining to “homelessness.The “DHCD” officials are guilty of a disregard for Federal “Title V,” mandates, etc. under “Title V” of the “McKinney-Vento Homelessness Act of 1987.”
One of the things that the Act sets forth, is that homeless service providers have a right of first refusal to acquire surplus property, at no cost before the property can be offered to state or local government, or be sold to generate revenue for the government.The DHCD allow the sale of the Sullivan Court House, a violation of federal law. When the federal government no longer has use for a property, the property is usually declared to be surplus. the “ DHCD administration” circumvented and removed, the local homeless sector and mosaic, from the annual and consolidated planning equations, that should have included the Sullivan Court House in the Annual and Consolidated Plans, in violation of federal mandates. As long as the DHCD is an MTW entity,it is required to comply with all HUD’s Mandates that apply’s to the homeless sector., in which it failed in doing so, moving ahead with the sale of the Sullivan Court House to real estate developer Leggat McCall Partners.
There is a similar set of circumstances surrounding the Volpe Center and Foundry Building. I’m including a public comment that I made at the last city council meeting, perhaps it will help the readers in understanding the magnitude of this deception, that is being played on the local populace, concerning these schemes to profit and hoard surplus government land here in Cambridge, and Middlesex County.
Hasson Rashid’s Weekly City Hall Public Comment: Homeless Excluded from The Volpe Center Discussion and Planning Equation
Volpe Center Cartel in Violation of Federal Homelessness Laws and Rights, and in Betrayal and Violation, of the Public Trust.
Posted by HRASHID on Jun 30, 2015.
Peace Be Unto you
Exclusion of the homeless sector is transpiring in our midst, right before our eyes, in regards to the “Volpe Center.” in actuality the “General Service Administration (GSA)/Volpe Center” is in violation of “Housing and Urban Development (HUD)”mandates, pertaining to “homelessness.” the North Eastern “GSA” officials are guilty of a disregard for Federal “Title V,” mandates, etc. under “Title V” of the “Mckinney-Vento Homelessness Act of 1987,” homeless service providers have a right of first refusal to acquire surplus property, at no cost before the property can be offered to state or local government, or be sold to generate revenue for the federal government. when the federal government no longer has use for a property, the property is usually declared to be surplus. the “Volpe Center administration” circumvented and removed, the local homeless sector and mosaic, from the planning equation for the Volpe, in violation of federal mandates.
Under the GSA’s plan, a developer would acquire the right to build out parts of the property in exchange for a commitment to construct a modern research facility for the department of transportation. the “Mckinney-Vento Act,” was intended to expand and coordinate federal resources and programs, to address the critically urgent needs’ of homeless Americans. the “Title V” surplus federal property program is central to this overarching mission. Title v is a proven vehicle for assisting America’s homeless with no cost to taxpayers.
GSA have been led to participate in a local disregard for federal “Title V” mandates. instead of notifying the public that there was vacant land and facilities, available for addressing homelessness needs, they circumvented this to publicized that a new federal building was in need, and are currently advertising for prospective developers to foot the bill also it doesn’t make good or common sense for the “GSA/Volpe administrations” to advertise for developers to foot the bill, when there is adequate government resources to be found, located, and viewed at the “US Dept. of Public Transportation’s website(http://www.transportation.gov/ ) ” for such an undertaking.
In reality it all boils down to a sophisticated local plot to erect barriers, up for keeping the homeless sector from securing Affordable and Fair Housing accommodations and opportunities, in the Kendall Square area of Cambridge.The local GSA should have been considering the vacant “Volpe Center” property parcels as vacant surplus land, for addressing homelessness. nowhere can it be found in public documentation that they have done so. instead the homelessness dilemma was smoothly circumvented, in favor of inviting developers to build a federal center. GSA’s Vople center developmental needs should be taken solely to the home office of the federal government in Washington, DC. for funding. The “City of Cambridge,” should be careful and cautious, with its zoning games, as they pertains to the Volpe Center,etc., area. It can and will most likely lead to an impediment to “Affordable and Fair Housing” for the “homeless sector and mosaic.”
http://cambridge.wickedlocal.com/article/20150630/news/150639795/0/search
https://www.cctvcambridge.org/node/329952
all eyes on volpe_ huge plans leave cambridge councilors feeling rushed – news – cambridge chronicle & tab – Cambridge,MA.html
Yours in Peace,
Mr. Hassom J. Rashid,
Cambridge,MA