Eagle residents sued to stop an apartment development. Here’s what judge just ruled
Some Eagle residents’ efforts to keep a 307-unit apartment complex from being built downtown may have come just a few days too late.
In February 2019, the Eagle City Council, under former Mayor Stan Ridgeway, considered whether to approve the Molinari Park project, which included 212 apartments, 91 townhouses and 5,000 square feet of commercial space. They were proposed for a 25-acre parcel near the southeast corner of South 2nd Street and East Plaza Drive in Eagle’s downtown.
The vote, which took place in February 2019, drew a crowd of frustrated Eagle residents . One said the project looked like “low-income housing” and said that the city was “overbuilding” its downtown. Others expressed the usual concerns about new development — that it would harm property values and increase traffic.
Despite opposition, the City Council approved the project, which council members said fit with their plans of a more walkable downtown.
That May, some of the frustrated residents asked the city to reconsider. Sure, the council said, we’ll take another look. But on June 25, the council confirmed its original decision.
That July 9, the residents tried again. They filed a second request for the city to reconsider their decision. The council on July 23 said no.
At that point, the residents had one option left: file a petition for judicial review, which is a way of asking a judge to review a local agency’s decision and determine whether the process was legal.
On Aug. 22, a group of residents — Michael Colby, Debra Mayhew, Judith Robinson, Paul Villaret, Cari West and Kevin Zasio — did just that. They claimed that the council had violated Eagle’s own comprehensive plan by approving the project.
As they awaited Fourth District Judge Michael Reardon’s answers, the developers were left in limbo. If they started to build, they could risk the judge telling them in three months that the city’s approval was null. So they waited. The 24 acres in downtown have remained vacant.
But on Thursday, an answer finally came. Reardon dismissed the petitioners’ case, saying they had failed to meet their deadline.
Under Idaho’s Local Land Use and Planning Act, opponents of a city council decision have just 28 days from the time that they’ve exhausted all options with the local agency for a rehearing to file a petition for judicial review.
The residents didn’t file their request until Aug. 22, 30 days after the decision denying their second request for reconsideration came on July 23.
The resident’s petition for judicial review was just one of the barriers that the developer, Eagle 26 LLC, headed by Boise resident Greg McVay, faced before breaking ground on Molinari Park.
In June of this year, Eagle 26 filed its own lawsuit against Eagle’s new mayor, Jason Pierce, and the City Council, claiming they took steps to stall the project. The developers say that they needed final approvals on certain items from city boards like the Parks, Pathways and Recreation Committee and the Design Review Board before they could receive a building permit, but the city declined to put their project on these committees’ agendas.
“Pierce has used the authority of his office to unduly delay the city’s processing of plaintiff’s application for final plat approval in order to achieve a forfeiture of plaintiff’s development rights,” the lawsuit alleges.
The case and development process with the city are “still ongoing,” said Stephen Goldstein, an attorney for Eagle 26 LLC.
