City's Rubber Stamp has Fallen; Allandale Votes to Sue Too

It's been a big week on the Northcross front.

If you are wondering "why now?" the answer is easy: Everybody's been waiting for the City to weigh in. The developer had a site plan submitted to the City for review. It was up to the City to decide whether to let the developer build a huge supercenter and parking garage in the middle of our neighborhood, or whether sanity would prevail.

The answer came Tuesday, when the City swung its rubber stamp and gave the developer just what they asked for.

As you've seen on our front page, RG4N responded by filing a lawsuit. We think the City botched the process, and we want the court to review it and declare that the approval was illegal.

We aren't the only ones. The Allandale Neighborhood Association (ANA) Executive Committee voted Wednesday evening (June 27) to file a separate lawsuit against the City and the developer. (The Northcross property lies in the Allandale neighborhood.)

The Association has issued a statement saying:

ANA has spent considerable time and money these past 6 months researching the impact the development will have on the neighborhood. We requested the city conduct an independent traffic impact analysis that includes the impact it will have on neighborhood streets, submitted an in-depth list of concerns related to the development, met with city council members, contracted with an outside traffic engineering firm to conduct a peer review of the initial traffic impact analysis (TIA), met with city staff, and sent a letter to city council members. We asked the city council to revoke the site plan in hopes that Allandale's concerns would be given due consideration when a new site plan was resubmitted. We were unssuccessful. [...] Consequently, ANA's only recourse is to file suit against the City in effort to get the site plan revoked.

You can read the whole thing at the Allandale Reporter web site: Allandale Executive Committee Votes to File Lawsuit