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The owner of the Whiskey Priest and Atlantic Beer Garden pubs in Boston’s Seaport District seeks to dismiss a Conservation Law Foundation lawsuit challenging a $260 million luxury condo tower at 150 Seaport Blvd.
CLF claims the 22-story, 263,000-square-foot tower was approved under a flawed process that violates state laws that protect public use of tidelands.
“CLF’s agenda is political,” Cronin Group attorneys Gareth Orsmond and Donald Pinto Jr. of Boston-based Pierce Atwood wrote in a memorandum supporting a motion to dismiss. “CLF should be – and was – heard in a political forum, not in the courts, which have long imposed standards for bringing claims under (state law).”
The memo also states the Boston-based environmental group lacks legal standing to challenge the project, which was approved last year under a new zoning district allowing greater height and density on the half-acre parcel.
The Boston Planning and Development Agency amended its municipal harbor plan for a 108-acre portion of the South Boston waterfront including the Cronin Group’s property after the company filed plans for a 22-story residential tower in December 2015. The revised regulations increased the maximum building height to 250 feet, decreased open space requirements from 50 to 25 percent of the parcel and reconfigured a water-dependent use zone along the waterfront.
In exchange, Cronin Group agreed to donate $1.5 million to the Martin Richard Park at Children’s Wharf, open up an interior section of the building to the public and build a 2,000-square-foot wharf along Seaport Boulevard to Commonwealth Pier.
State Secretary of Energy and Environmental Affairs Matthew Beaton approved the new regulations in 2016 and the BPDA subsequently approved the project.
“(Beaton’s) decision was not forged by whimsy. The amended MHP went through a rigorous public process. It was initiated by the city of Boston which has (and should have) a significant say in how its shorefront is developed; it was reviewed extensively by Coastal Zone Management, DEP and the secretary; it was commented on by thousands,” Orsmond and Pinto wrote in the filing.
CLF in February challenged the secretary’s decision in Suffolk Superior Court, arguing that Beaton’s approval of the new harbor plan amounts to “spot zoning” and violate the state’s public trust doctrine supporting public uses of tidelands.
