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The Superior Court’s Appellate Division yesterday handed down a ruling rejecting the Powerhouse Neighborhood Association’s (PADNA) appeal of a lower court’s decision upholding the City Council’s April 2008 decision to allow spot zoning in the area covered by the Powerhouse Arts District (PAD) Redevelopment Plan.

PADNA had sued to stop the changes, but in April 2009 Superior Court Judge Barbara Curran ruled in favor of the city and Toll Brothers, the developer of the site. Toll’s project would, among other things, deviate from the original PAD Redevelopment Plan by creating high-rise buildings in the low-rise warehouse district. It calls for a total of 925 residential units, 44,939 square feet of retail and 917 parking spaces, as well as a 550-seat performing arts theater and an arts-themed public plaza.

PADNA argued that the 2008 amendment adopted by the council was “fundamentally contradictory” to the initial PAD Redevelopment Plan approved in 2004, which called for mostly low- and mid-rise structures, and as such should fail under review. But the court ruled there was no “substantial evidence in the record” to prove this charge.

“Plaintiff contends that the area was blighted, and the PAD plan was devised to encourage development of mid-rise, low-density structures preserving the historical industrial atmosphere of the neighborhood. Because that plan has been successful, plaintiff claims that it cannot be changed rationally,” the opinion reads. “However, nothing in the statute either precludes a successful plan from being substantially amended or requires that a redevelopment plan forever depend upon the initial impetus for the blight designation.”

It continues:

“Furthermore, whatever the merits of the argument that continuation of the existing PAD plan was the superior option, Council rejected it, and that was Council’s prerogative so long as the rejection was neither arbitrary nor capricious.”

Court Opinion on Powerhouse Arts District Development Plan