SARANAC LAKE – Lawyers representing the village Planning Board and the proposed Lake Flower Resort and Spa have responded to a lawsuit brought against them by the owner of a potentially competing hotel.

The legal filings are mostly blanket denials of the allegations made by Roedel Companies, which owns and is restoring the Hotel Saranac, although there are some more meaty counter-arguments made in the attorneys’ responses.

Meanwhile, Roedel Companies is asking a judge to overturn the village Board of Trustees’ decision to deny its Freedom of Information Law request for a confidential memo that contained legal advice about the controversial resort project.

New Hampshire-based Roedel Companies is challenging the village Planning Board’s July 7 approval of Saranac Lake Resort LLC’s proposed 93-room, four-story hotel, spa and conference center on the site of three existing Lake Flower Avenue motels: the Adirondack Motel, the Lake Side Motel and the Lake Flower Inn.

The bulk of Roedel Companies’ case surrounds 203 River St., a parcel that was included in a zoning district the village board created for the resort – the Lake Flower Planned Unit Development District – as a potential location for off-site parking. Saranac Lake Resort representatives have since said they no longer need it, and the parcel wasn’t included when the Planning Board approved the project in July. Roedel Companies quietly purchased the property in June for $179,000 under the name Malone Real Estate LLC, which is the official plaintiff in the lawsuit.

Roedel Companies is asking the court to annul the Planning Board’s approval of the resort because it claims the removal of 203 River St. reduces the project size to less than 3 acres, in violation of a 2014 law that set the standards for PUDDs in the village. The company also claims Saranac Lake Resort LLC didn’t have the required legal control of the property during the site plan review process and that its site plan application has “overwhelming inadequacies” that violate village law and the village land-use code.

The Planning Board’s eight-page response is signed by attorney Leah Everhart of Glens Falls-based Miller, Mannix, Schachner and Hafner. She asks the court to deny Roedel Companies’ petition in its entirety and award the village the costs it’s incurred in the case.

Everhart argues that an applicant seeking site plan review, like Saranac Lake Resort, “has no legal obligation to demonstrate that he or she has an ownership interest over any property in the zoning district” except for the site of proposed development. Roedel Companies doesn’t identify any provision in the land-use code or state law that would require a landowner seeking to develop one site to own another where no development is proposed, Everhart writes.

Saranac Lake Resort’s 21-page response to the lawsuit was issued by attorney Matt Norfolk of Lake Placid. Like the village’s, it consists largely of denials of the allegations, but it also offers some “affirmative defenses.”

Among other things, Norfolk said Roedel Companies lacks standing to challenge the Planning Board’s determination and failed to include all the necessary parties in the lawsuit, namely the owners of the three motel properties.

“(Roedel Companies) has suffered no harm or injuries and knowingly came to the PUDD and acquired 203 River Street for the sole purpose of preventing (Saranac Lake Resort) from constructing and operating a resort hotel … which petitioner and its members and agents perceive would or may compete with The Hotel Saranac,” Norfolk wrote.

Roedel Companies has said it filed the lawsuit because the village wasn’t “playing by the rules” when it approved the Lake Flower hotel, but it has raised concerns about competing against another hotel.

“I think it’s fair to say that plays a role in this,” said John Muldowney of Saranac Lake, an attorney who’s represented Roedel Companies, after the lawsuit was filed.

The petition was filed in Essex County State Supreme Court. It’s been assigned to Judge Glen T. Bruening of Saratoga Springs.

FOIL appeal

Tom Ulasewicz of FitzGerald Morris Baker Firth in Glens Falls is the lead attorney on the case for Roedel Companies. He said in an email Tuesday that his client plans to appeal the village’s decision to reject its FOIL request for the confidential legal memo by filing an Order to Show Cause with Judge Bruening.

The memo, which is referenced in Roedel Companies’ lawsuit, was written by Everhart. She advised that if 203 River St. is removed as a parking area for the Lake Flower hotel project, the developers should ask the village for a variance or an amendment to the Lake Flower PUDD. Otherwise, Everhart wrote, any subsequent approvals could result in a challenge that would have “a fairly strong legal position” since the village board had specifically included 203 River St. in the PUDD for off-site parking.

The memo was mistakenly left in the project’s public file. The village later removed it, but a person who read it before then, and who wished to remain anonymous, described it to the Enterprise. Village Community Development Director Jeremy Evans later confirmed the substance of the memo to the newspaper.

The village denied a FOIL request for the memo made by Michael Crowe, an attorney who works with Ulasewicz, saying it’s “privileged” and exempt from disclosure. Crowe argued that those exemptions have been waived “based upon both the physical and verbal disclosures” of the memo.

Robert Freeman, director of the state’s Committee on Open Government, said in August that the memo could potentially be subject to disclosure since some of its substance was confirmed by a village official.