Court allows Rock Hill warehouse project to move forward in Thompson

The Lake Communities Alliance Steering Committee has run out of legal road in its fight over a massive warehouse project in Rock Hill, clearing the way for two buildings totaling more than 561,000 square feet on a site north of Route 17 and Rock Hill Drive.

The New York Court of Appeals reversed the Appellate Division and reinstated the Sullivan County Supreme Court judgment in favor of the Town of Thompson and Glen Wild Land Company LLC. The ruling leaves residents with far fewer options to stop the project and shifts the fight from the courtroom to the planning and permitting process.

At the center of the case is a key zoning distinction in the Town of Thompson code. The court said warehouses are permitted in the zoning district with site plan approval and a special use permit, while distribution centers are not. That definition mattered because the planning board limited the approval to warehouse use, a decision the court left in place.

Glen Wild first submitted the project on Nov. 12, 2021, then revised it on Dec. 15, 2021. The application called for two warehouse buildings totaling about 560,000 square feet. That was a sharp reduction from Glen Wild’s 2020 concept, which sought a two million-square-foot facility in three buildings after replacing the earlier Rock Hill Town Center proposal, a 560-acre mixed-use plan that had included 1,613 homes and about 60,000 square feet of retail space.

The warehouse site covers about 231 acres of the larger 560-acre parcel, with reporting placing it north of New York State Route 17 and Rock Hill Drive, east of Edwards Road, south of Marsh Road, and on both sides of Glen Wild Road. The Thompson Planning Board approved the site plan and special use permit with conditions in July 2022.

Opposition has centered on what the project would mean for daily life in the lake community corridor. Residents raised concerns about traffic, truck volume, wetlands, air quality and a possible bald eagle nesting site. One site plan version cited 449 employee parking spaces and 111 tractor-trailer spaces; another listed 294 employee spaces, 105 trailer spaces and two driveways. Those are the numbers that have fueled fears about congestion, neighborhood character and pressure on nearby property values.

Jessica Lansdale of the Lake Communities Alliance argued that the planning board would still need to grant a new permit because an earlier one had expired, and said the community around Rock Hill has grown more congested since the project was first proposed. With the court battle over, the remaining debate now belongs to local land-use officials, not the residents who tried to stop the project in court.