Property owners in town have filed 32 lawsuits against Guilderland, seeking to have a collective $378 million cut from the current assessed values of their properties.
The federal judge that dismissed a suit from Guilderland residents concluded that, at worst, the town allowed Pyramid to clear-cut part of its property and, she wrote, “While this certainly could be seen as vexatious given that the property was undergoing a SEQRA review, it is not the sort of conduct that shocks the conscience or is ‘truly brutal and offensive to human dignity.’”
The lawsuit alleges that the town and Pyramid’s actions evince Guilderland’s “unalterably closed mind pre-determining the outcome of the project’s land use permitting process.” Guilderland Supervisor Peter Barber responded that residents had wanted higher-density development, apartments and shops, closer to existing retail, which would keep traffic off of Western Avenue.
Pyramid has agreed to convey to the Rapp Road Historical District five properties that it has bought within the district; the properties could be used, it says, to build a cultural center. The district denotes a rare intact neighborhood of homes built by African-Americans who came north from Mississippi during the Great Migration.
