Bloggin’ on the Edge

Posted by Scott Spielman at 1:58 PM | Comments

I wasn’t surprised that the Hindu Temple expansion won approval from the Board of Trustees on Tuesday night, nor was I surprised it was a unanimous decision.

The plan meets all the ordinances—or exceeds them—and the church was there before all the residential around it. There wasn’t any way for the trustees to reject it.

But was surprised to learn about the offer from the developer to move the building 100 feet to the north and toward the eastern side of its long, narrow plot of land. That offer was tendered with a 48-hour window for unanimous approval from the neighbors that they apparently couldn’t meet.

My first question after that was probably the same as everyone else’s in the packed meeting room. I waited for one of the trustees to ask it: Supervisor Tom Yack started with Todd LaJoy and went down the row from there, asking everyone if they had comments or questions.

It wasn’t until he got down to Todd Caccamo—the last board member—that I heard it: Is the offer to move the building still on the table?

The answer was ‘no,’ and the developer’s rep Bryan Amann cited some logistics with the redesign that they hadn’t realized when the offer was made in the first place. Is that true? I don’t know. It doesn’t really matter, either.

Caccamo knew that the board had no real authority to direct the developer to make the change. He knew he didn’t have much choice in approving the plan, either. He still asked the tough question that was probably on everyone’s mind when no one else seemed willing to. He deserves some credit for that.

In the end the project meets all the criteria it’s supposed to. The developer even followed some additional conditions that they probably didn’t have to. The trustees had no other choice but to approve it.

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