St. Tammany Parish government is being sued a second time over the controversial Medline distribution center proposal. But this time, it’s the landowners taking the parish to court, alleging that they were denied a land-clearing permit last month for political reasons.
All State Financial Co., owner of the land south of Covington where the medical supply giant wants to build, filed suit in 22nd Judicial District Court Monday. The petition asks the court to direct the parish’s head of development, Ross Liner, to issue the permit or subject the denial to judicial review.
Liner is also named as a defendant in the lawsuit, which will be heard by state District Judge Richard Swartz.
The suit follows a decision by the parish’s Board of Adjustment last month to uphold the permit denial, which affects 47 acres of the nearly 70-acre site between Ochsner Boulevard and Interstate 12.
Nearby residents who oppose the 800,000-square-foot distribution center at that location due to flooding and traffic concerns sued the parish in January after the Parish Council’s rezoned the property — a move that was needed for the project to move forward.
All State Financial, which is owned by Bruce Wainer and his family, claims that Parish President Mike Cooper’s administration never intended to grant the permit but instead treated the company differently than other applicants and subjected it to months of stall tactics, including ignoring phone calls and emails seeking meetings.
In a prepared statement, Wainer said the company had no alternative but to file suit after unprecedented roadblocks and “political posturing.” He said the company wants the parish to act in a manner that is consistent with the property’s zoning, parish ordinances and all other land-clearing permits previously issued.
Among other things, the suit says All State Financial was told in April that unless it could maintain 50% of the oak trees on the site, the permit request would have to go before the Board of Adjustment. But the plaintiffs argue that the parish code doesn’t include any requirement for applicants to maintain half the oak trees on the site.
Other language in the parish code says that an application for tree removal and replacement “shall be granted” if one of several conditions exists, the suit said, including the tree being located in an area where a structure will be place or when its location denies reasonable use of the property.
Medline, acting on behalf of the property owners, told the Planning Department that it was willing to pay into the parish’s tree bank and plant replacement trees, the suit says, and submitted a new plan for the trees.
But Liner refused to approve any plans that involved removing more than 50% of the oaks, saying that Medline’s plan, which called for removing 71% of the trees, “far exceeds the previously discussed percentage which the Parish Department can approve administratively.”
The fee that would have to be paid to the tree bank would be $268,450, Liner wrote, saying that amount far exceeds any previous payment “and thus illustrates that this project if far from typical, warranting review by the Board of Adjustments.”
The parish code contains no such limits, the suit contends, adding that the parish has approved hundreds of similar projects in the past when trees fell into a building’s footprint.
Medline then reduced the size of the building and changed its location on the property in order to keep more than 50 % of the oak trees, the suit says. But when the company then asked to clear pine trees from the site while resolving the oak tree matter, the suit says that it was told that request would not be expedited.
Finally, in late August, the department rejected the land-clearing permit, citing adverse impact on wetlands and the surrounding community, the suit says. A press release issued by Cooper followed that “touted the denial as a fulfillment of a campaign promise.”
The suit says Cooper’s press release proves that the denial was politically motivated. It also cites a memo from St. Tammany Parish Councilman Marty Dean, whose district includes the site, to the administration calling the process a charade.
“After reading the press release Monday, it struck me that through this entire process, there has always been the direction to deny the project based on ‘campaign promises,'” Dean wrote. He sarcastically asked if the administration had plans to bring in another large corporation after having angered Medline.
“Maybe General Electric is coming! Or Microsoft is planning on building a national office here,” Dean wrote. “But I doubt it. It’s just a campaign promise that needed to be kept in exchange for a few votes.”
