Pool Legal Funds? Betts Asks Yale Farm Foes
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5/6/2004
CANAAN — Claiming appeal of permits for the proposed Yale Farm Golf Club will "merely postpone the inevitable," developer Roland Betts has suggested opponents give up the fight and both sides contribute the saved legal fees to a charitable fund.
In an April 21 letter to Canaan Conservation Coalition (CCC) and the Coalition for Sound Growth in Norfolk, Betts said at least $250,000 could go into a "hope chest" that would be divided evenly between the two towns. The 780-acre Yale farm straddles the town line. Inland Wetlands and Planning and Zoning commissions in Canaan and Norfolk have approved special permit applications for the private golf club.
Scott Asen of CCC and neighbors Catherine Gevers and Wheaton Byers sent a letter to Betts last week stating they remain convinced the proposed development will cause irreversible harm to the environment and adversely affect local economy.
"We believe that Yale Farm should be placed in conservation and have backed up our conviction with an above-market offer which would do just that," Asen wrote.
Last October, Asen made an offer worth up to $9 million in cash and tax credits for conservation easements that would prevent further development of the property. Betts returned the $55,000 check Asen gave him as an expression of good faith. It was Asen’s third attempt to buy the property adjacent to his Tobey Hill Road weekend home.
Betts said the legal actions by the coalitions "are in myriad ways bad for our community and have no realistic chance of prevailing. They constitute a considerable waste of time, money and goodwill, strain already strained relationships, and benefit only the lawyers who bring them. At great cost they merely postpone the inevitable."
Asen called the offer "very strange" from a business point of view. He believes Betts is focusing on some people's objection to the cost to the towns of the appeals, and an alleged conflict between bringing suit and Byers’ capacity as chairman of the Board of Finance in Canaan.
"We believe we’re doing what’s right for this property and the towns," Asen told The Lakeville Journal this week. "This money would be spent anyway. Roland would be suing the towns if the applications were turned down."
"The change in course," Betts wrote, would eliminate high litigation costs, put Yale Farm on the tax rolls one to two years sooner, put to rest ill will between the towns, eliminate the awkward position Byers has placed himself in and provide a "windfall" for services and causes. Betts specifically named fire and ambulance services, Geer Village and the Canaan Railroad [Union] Station.
The two sides have agreed on one thing: A long, hard look has been taken at the environment at Yale Farm along with the impact of development on habitats, natural species and properties downhill of the site. Betts noted the coalitions’ efforts prompted many changes to the golf course plan in order to protect the environment.
But Asen wrote that the plan, even as approved locally, leaves too many environmental unknowns.
Asen pointed out that the Canaan Inlands Wetlands Commission gave its approval without defining where a 6.5-acre pond will be moved, or allowing a chance for public comment. Experts hired by the Canaan coalition were not allowed to check wetland flagging on the property and Canaan did not check measurements, yet substantial changes were made by the Norfolk Inland Wetlands Commission. Environmental restrictions on wetlands are not the same in each town and details of homes proposed for the site, and their effect on natural resources, were left out of the plan.
He refuted Betts’ statements of the inevitability of the project, noting the Department of Environmental Protection and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers have yet to approve.
"It’s clear we have the responsibility to appeal this," he said. "We’re doing what’s right for the towns."
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