Summary
The Kettaneh/Lepow suit against the Board of Standards and Appeals and its Chair and Vice-chair, and the Trustees of Congregation Shearith Israel requests that the Boards’ grant of zoning variances be annulled. The granted variances are documented in the Board’s resolution filed 29 August 2008.
If remanded to the Board for further consideration, the suit seeks to have the Chair and Vice-Chair excluded and that Plaintiffs, as a party to the reconsideration, be permitted to question Trustee representatives.
The Petition filed on 29 September 2008 by attorney Alan D. Sugarman asserts that any of several misstatements of fact, violations of BSA procedures, lack of findings, and ambiguous regulations are grounds for annulment.
The various misrepresentations by representatives of the Trustees, Shelly S. Friedman and Jack Freeman, and the lack of diligence of the Board, are not without purpose. The Trustees seek variances that allow them to proceed with a very profitable project to develop their property at 10 West 70th Street. As the petition demonstrates, the property could be developed to satisfy all of the architectural and program needs of the Congregation without variances, but it might be less profitable.
The representatives task, then, was to prove the unprovable--that the building configurations that don't satisfy their needs are unprofitable, while the desired configuration is barely profitable, conditions necessary for Board approval of the variances.