Wednesday will be the start of a cold, cold winter for Four Seasons. 

Queen Anne's County voters one day earlier will vote in five new commissioners. No matter who is chosen, all 11 candidates have vowed to drastically scale back or kill the controversial 1,350-home project on Kent Island altogether. 

And earlier this month, a citizens group filed an injunction in Circuit Court to halt the project, saying that a contract signed between the county and the developer was illegal. 

The lawsuit, filed by the Queen Anne's Conservation Association against developer K. Hovnanian Cos. and the county, is one of three filed by residents in the past two months in an effort to stop the project in its tracks. 

Two others were filed in September by members of the Kent Island Defense League who want the project to be subject to a referendum and would like the Maryland Department of the Environment to reconsider its approval of the county's project to expand its wastewater treatment plant on Kent Island to make room for new growth. 

"These are part of a conscious and coordinated effort to assure that the five new commissioners have some flexibility when they take office," said Richard Altman, a Queenstown resident who is one of seven people named in the lawsuit along with Queen Anne's Conservation Association. 

In the lawsuit against the county and K. Hovnanian, the 70-member association asks the court for an injunction, stating that the county violated its six-month building moratorium by signing a Developer's Rights and Responsibilities Agreement with the developer on Sept. 17. 

"We want the court to say that if the county and the developer put any more time and money into this project, they do so at their own risk," Mr. Altman said. 

Queen Anne's Conservation is best known for stopping the creation of a nuclear power plant on the Chester River in 1970. 

Spokesmen for K. Hovnanian and the county all said it was too early for them to comment on the lawsuit filed on Oct. 8. 

"I only very recently received a copy of the complaint," said Mark K. Stemen, regional president of K. Hovnanian. "We always have and will continue to follow local and state plans and laws and court decisions." 

A hearing date has not yet been set. 

The developer's agreement requires K. Hovnanian to pay more than $20 million for improvements to county roads, water, sewer and emergency services. 

The six-month moratorium, which ends Nov. 21, prevented county planning and zoning officials from processing all building applications to give the county time to institute regulations to better control growth. 

While developer's rights and responsibilities agreements are not prohibited in the moratorium, Mr. Altman said the document is a "key action in processing a building application." 

"Clearly, staff time was used to review the agreement which is a long and complicated document," he said. 

He added that by approving the agreement, the developer was able to "lock into" the county's current building regulations and not be subject to the new ones that are being developed during the moratorium. 

"We just think that is blatantly unfair," he said. 

County Administrator Mark Belton also said it's too early to comment on the suit. 

"The deadline that was set by the Circuit Court for a response (to the lawsuit) is well-after the general election," he said. "While the current Board of County Commissioners will be making the initial response to the court, I will be discussing the issue with the commissioners-elect and the current board will take those comments into consideration before officially responding." 

Strong opposition 

Slow-growth activists were particularly enraged by the county commissioners' Sept. 17 decision to approve the developer's agreement with K. Hovnanian, especially since they were voted out because voters believed they did not do enough to control growth. 

"We asked them not to and they did anyway," said Rodney Niedomanski, a Grasonville resident who is running for county commissioner. 

Before approving the agreement, the commissioners said they did not feel it was necessary for the county to wait. 

"Four years of negotiations has gotten us to this point," said Commissioners President George O'Donnell, D-Queenstown. 

Richard Moser, also a county commissioner candidate and president of the Kent Island Defense League, said the commissioners' actions that day are proof that voters made the right decision in the primary. 

"As each new day passes, it becomes more clear that the current administration is not listening to the people and does not hold the interests of existing citizens in high regard," he said. 

K. Hovnanian would like to build the project on 562 acres in Stevensville and Chester north of Route 50 along Castle Marina Road. The company, which purchased the property for more than $10 million, is headquartered in Red Bank, N.J. 

K. Hovnanian's family-controlled parent company is one of the nation's largest homebuilders, earning $1.75 billion and building nearly 7,000 homes during fiscal year 2001. As one of the 10 largest builders in the country, lawsuits are nothing new to K. Hovnanian. 

Last year, in New Jersey, for example, 15 home buyers filed lawsuits accusing K. Hovnanian Enterprises of "bait and switch" tactics after they viewed a model home and placed orders for options like hardwood floors and Jacuzzi tubs that the builder later said it would not provide. 

Joseph Stevens, the Centreville attorney for K. Hovnanian, said it was still too early for him to comment on what the company's response will be to the new lawsuit. 

"The deadline for our response is still three weeks away," he said. "Right now, we're weighing our options, analyzing the suit and researching the law that's applicable to it." 

He also declined to comment on whether K. Hovnanian considered the developer's agreement it had with the county a contract that could be breached. 

"That might be one of the issues in the suit," he said.

mmohsberg@capitalgazette.com 

Published November 02, 2002, The Capital,   Annapolis, Md.
Copyright © 2002 The Capital, Annapolis, Md.
 

A group of Kent Island residents want to know why the county, in the midst of building the new Route 8 elementary school and athletic fields, didn't tell them there would be a new access road cutting through their neighborhood. 

On Oct. 21, the county began improving the shoulder of Davidson Road in the Baldwin Acres neighborhood to allow for additional parking for the future athletic fields. It also is creating an access road that will connect Davidson Road to the school and athletic fields. 

Stephen Mirack, a Davidson Road resident, discounted county explanations of the improvements as safety measures, saying the county promised the project wouldn't affect area residents. 

"If the school traffic and recreational facilities were not going to affect residents or their property, there should have been no need to widen the road," he said. 

Steve Walls, county director of public works, said the road will provide an additional exit from the property in case something happens at the main exit. 

"You could have an incident occur at the main entrance of the school that would not allow entrance to Route 8," he said. "By having an alternative route, it would allow some of the traffic to exit the school property." 

County officials are paving the shoulders because they expect parents to park there once the fields are in use. 

"We know they are going to park there so it's just a matter of being pro-active," county Chief Engineer Garth Jones told the Queen Anne's County Board of Commissioners yesterday. 

Residents originally were told at a Dec. 13 county Planning Commission meeting that there would be no access road, according to Mr. Mirack. The meeting was publicized with a sign on the property. 

But two weeks ago, residents learned that changes were made to the plans in a subsequent meeting. 

"My wife then went to the Planning and Zoning Office and found out that there had been another meeting that was not advertised on the property to approve the changes to the concept plan that included major construction on and along Davidson Drive," Mr. Mirack said. 

Kirsten Mirack researched county documents and said she learned that the improved shoulder and access road were alternative projects only to be completed if funding was approved. It later was. 

County officials said they have met with all of the residents directly affected by the roadwork, and have scheduled a meeting on the project Nov. 6 at the Percy Thomas Center. 

Mr. Mirack, who has contacted a lawyer to assist the residents in the matter, said the community should have been informed earlier so they could have expressed their concerns before the project was under way. 

"Our road is a mess now," he said. 

mmohsberg@capitalgazette.com 

Published October 30, 2002, The Capital, Annapolis, Md.
Copyright © 2002 The Capital, Annapolis, Md.