Some time ago we were involved in the planning of a large multi-family housing development and provided the architectural design of the buildings. The Town of Branford was not very welcoming of our proposal as we worked our way through inland wetlands and planning and zoning commissions. In fact, the Town wound up taking the property by eminent domain in order to stop the development. Well, the protracted litigation has concluded and our client, New England Estates, LLC, has won what will amount to a judgment of about $20,000,000 against Branford. The Town will, no doubt, appeal but the case is solid and I believe will probably be upheld.
If you are interested in seeing how things transpired, there is a special website that our clients' attorneys have posted so that the residents of Branford can see where their officials took them. Here is the link:
Shipman & Goodwin, the attornery for the developer also have the case on their firm website here:
The New Haven Independent has written a lot of articles about the ongoing case. Here is a link to a listing of the articles for reviewing:
Here is our front elevation of one of the typical buildings that had 6 dwelling units:
[[image:fairways.bmp.file:FAIRWAYS FRONT ELEVATION:center:0]]
Needless to say this project will not be built on the site in Branford. So we will be looking around for another place to use our design. If you know of one, let us know. At least this is one of the unbuilt projects that still had a happy ending.
UPDATED 07/27/2010:
CASE MAY BE HEADED TO U.S. SUPREME COURT
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