Developers sue city after partnering with it

Aberdeen, Md. (Map, News) - A corporation fighting alongside Aberdeen to develop a residential community on Wetlands Golf Course is suing the city, claiming officials have not moved fast enough on the project.

Wetlands LLC has filed a cross-claim against Aberdeen because the city has not moved forward on the developer’s request last year to expand city boundaries to include new houses, condominiums and apartments that would be built around the golf course. The annexation process is on hold after residents filed their own suit against the city to stop it from considering the Wetlands proposal.

In June, Wetlands attorney Curtis Coon fought successfully to be included as a co-defendant in the suit.

Now that his client is a party in the residents’ lawsuit, Coon is asking the court to make the city move forward with the annexation petition. City ordinances say petitions should be considered by a planning committee within 60 days of the application, but Coon says the Wetlands petition has been sitting idle since Sept. 29, 2006.

“We’re asking the court to order the city to put us through its process, according to its mandated timetable,” Coon said.

City officials say the developers were just trying to force the annexation back into consideration.

Aberdeen City Council President Mike Hiob said the developers were “trying to expedite the process, and we’re stuck in the middle.”

In a referendum in December, voters rejected the city’s first attempt to annex more than 500 acres near Wetlands Golf Course.

After Wetlands filed a slightly different request in September, seven residents filed a lawsuit to keep the city from considering it because, they say, the referendum should have been the final word.

But if the city hadn’t at least considered the second application, it would have violated Wetlands’ constitutional right to petition the government, Hiob said.

Coon demanded that the annexation petition go before the City Council without waiting on a planning commission’s recommendation, as city protocol requires.

“Something has got to get started,” he wrote in the lawsuit.

msilvestri@baltimoreexaminer.com

msantoni@baltimoreexaminer.com