Prince Lobel Partner Jeffrey Pyle was quoted in The Boston Globe and the Boston Business Journal today on a major legal ruling the firm obtained for its client, the Harbor Towers Condominium Trust, regarding the process for development on the waterfront in Massachusetts. The ruling could have broad implications for development in all Massachusetts “tidelands.”
The case arose from plans to build a 600-foot tower on the site of the Harbor Garage in the Downtown Waterfront district of Boston. On Thursday, April 1, Suffolk Superior Court Judge Brian Davis held that the state’s regulations for permitting development projects on Commonwealth’s waterfront were legally flawed, because they granted approval authority to the Secretary of Energy and Environmental Affairs without legislative authorization to do so. The ruling effectively nullifies a “municipal harbor plan” that had allowed a tower of 600 feet in height on the garage site.
Pyle notes that the ruling presents “an opportunity for a new process” to determine what kind of development is appropriate at the water’s edge.
Read the Globe story here.