The Wine Wars: The Unrelenting Wannabe Vintners Return - On Chatham’s Dime
They Don’t Want to File An Article 78 - They Want Another Bite At The Apple - And They Want The Apple For Free
It happened.
Lawrence Howard, Esq., of Shulman Howard & McPherson LLP in Averill Park (yes, Averill Park, not exactly the Cravath letterhead one might hope for at a moment like this) has written to the Town of Chatham Zoning Board of Appeals on behalf of Fox Hill Estate and Winery LLC. Fourteen days after the ZBA voted 4-0 to send Edwin and Cherie Williams’ tasting room dreams into the long good night. They are back at the trough. It is not the right trough.
Howard wants a rehearing. Of course he does. A rehearing is free. The actual legal remedy for a party aggrieved by a zoning board’s decision is an Article 78 petition in Columbia County Supreme Court. That is not free.
This is the part nobody is saying out loud, so let’s say it. The Williamses live in an 8,300-square-foot pile on 53.7 acres listed at $5.65 million. They have an unfenced pool. An outdoor kitchen. A greenhouse. They have a separate garage they would like to convert into a venue where strangers will pay them money to drink wine they may have made, on a vineyard of 100 to 400 vines. They have the money to do this the right way. They just do not feel like spending it.
So Chatham get’s the Leona Helmsley special. Only the little people pay.
Their tenacity is really what should be bottled.
What they also have is a lawyer in Averill Park who has presumably explained to them what an Article 78 actually costs. Filing fee, $210. Then transcripts. A verified petition. A certified record. Briefs. Hours. Fifty thousand dollars, easy. Six figures by the time it ends.
And so they are doing what people of a certain ilk always do. They are trying to get someone else to pay.
.
The someone else is Chatham. The costs to the town are real.
A rehearing under Town Law §267-a(12) requires no filing fee. None. Zero. The ZBA Clerk, paid by Chatham taxpayers, will notice the meeting and prepare the packet. The Town’s attorney, paid by Chatham taxpayers, will read Howard’s letter and draft a new resolution. The five volunteer ZBA members, who already gave Fox Hill four months of their evenings free of charge while the Williamses’ lawyer billed by the hour, will be asked to give them four more. The Town Hall will be heated and lit. The neighbors, who already showed up on a freezing January night to speak against this project, will be asked to show up again. On their own time. After their own workdays. So that Edwin and Cherie can save themselves the cost of a lawsuit they are clearly already planning to file. Howard reserves rights at the close of his letter. That is lawyer for: we will see you in court.
Now, the law. The law is worse than the optics, if you can believe it.
Town Law §267-a(12) requires unanimity. The vote against Fox Hill was 4-0, with one member absent. Howard is asking those same four members to unanimously declare they were wrong about a determination they spent four months reaching. His “primary basis” is the property’s inclusion in Agricultural District 10.
