In 2005, Norman and Natalie Levendos bought a new three-bedroom dwelling at the Ellenridge condominium development for just under $200,000, or about $100,000 less than similar units in Orange County.

Norman told the Times-Herald Record on March 11, 2005, "I looked at condos in Orange County. Forget it," Norman said. "I was going to sell my house and use everything to buy a condo."

Nearly three years later, the couple and Ellenridge's other residents are facing problems that have plagued the development since it began in 1988.

On Monday, October 22, 2007, Natalie Levendos, Doreen Finerow and Joseph Petillo, representing the board of the Ellenridge Homeowner's Association, went before Ellenville's Village Board with their latest set of grievances.

A construction trailer and construction debris. More debris from work currently underway in Ellenridge. Photos by Joe Bevilacqua

History

Residents of Ellenridge would only speak anonymously, some fearing damage to their property values, others saying they do not want to ruin negotiations going on with the current developer, Moses Braver.

When the Ellenridge development started in 1988, it consisted of sixteen units. Today, there are roughly sixty. One resident bought his townhouse in 1989 when the first developer went bankrupt and sold the units at auction. He got his house for $22,000. "Sixteen of us bid low and we got them," he said. "We stayed that size for about sixteen years. And then in the last few years, along came a developer, DLK Construction Company, headed by Mike Gutterman, who made a presentation to the village, with engineers who were trying to work off the old plans, which were no longer feasible."

The resident went on to claim that Gutterman said he would crib the area with natural stone. But when the work in the development began, "they stripped all the topsoil and sod. They found one rock on the property the size of your steering wheel, the rest was all sand. The only time I'd ever seen that much sand was in Miami Beach or the desert."

In 2005, residents, who were already upset over conditions in Ellenridge, were even more disturbed when they showed up for a site meeting with village officials, only to find the meeting had been held hours earlier. Ellenville Mayor Jeff Kaplan apologized for the misunderstanding and asked the village's building code enforcement officer, Brian Schug, to list some of the problems residents of the subdivision have experienced.

Among the issues Schug found in his first inspection were hay bales, cribbing, silt fences, sediment traps and weep-holes overburdened with sediment. Residents complained of water in basements and coming through basement windows.

Recently, Kaplan called these complaints, "dated… and [they] are a direct byproduct of residential living in an ongoing construction site, especially due to the mountainous terrain. As you could surmise from the tenor of the discussion, these problems do not exist today."

Attempts were made to reach Mike Gutterman President of DLK Construction or Kevin O'Sullivan, DLK owner but their phone was, "temporarily disconnected."

Residents Question Village Priorities

Longtime residents say the developers have not lived up to what they are supposed to do, and the village board has been going easy on them since the beginning.

"I can't accuse anyone of financial things going on, but sometimes it really seems that way," said one Ellenridge homeowner. "Last month, we went to the village board meeting and we made them address six or seven issues that have been ignored for months and months."

One outstanding issue is an empty trailer parked in plain site across from some of the newer units.

"They said, 'If the developer won't move this trailer, we'll just move it and charge him, and we'll do it within five days.' That was a month ago. It just never gets done," complained one resident.

Another problem is that the original plans called for cribbing with retaining walls due to the elevation of Ellenridge. Residents claim DLK went back to the village and said they could save thousands of dollars if they didn't put in the retaining walls, and the village allowed it.

"And then along came the rains and down came the mudslides," said another resident. "Their [DLK's] drain was set too high, and that was approved by the village engineer, who signed off on it. The only way some of those drains can get water in them is if God makes it rain in the drain. Any of the water that hits the ground… well, water does not run up hill."

A number of homeowners raised concerns about the fact that the former developer's lawyer, Jay Zeiger, works in Kaplan's law office.

"Every time there's a village meeting about this place," complains one resident, "the mayor recuses himself from it. But I don't know if he recused himself when his law office got all of the closings."

Kaplan responded to these concerns, saying, "There was a while there where I had to be careful as to my involvement. Not that I personally felt a conflict but my partner represented the former developer. No special treatment was given and most of what they did was resolved before I even ran for office. Now that there is a new developer, I feel more comfortable getting involved and seeing what I can do to resolve it. The real problem that you have on that whole development is that you're building into mountain. And while it's been done tastefully, people are living there during the development."

Several homeowner association members complained of a "bait and switch" by the developer, DLK. One resident recalled a walking tour of one of the development's unit.

"When you went in, they showed you copper pipes in the basement, press board walls and plywood floors, in the first nine units. Then, they built twenty-five units and the floors became press board, the walls became a material they used to build chicken coops out of, and they switched from expensive copper pipes to PVC pipes."

Kaplan, an attorney who deals in land transactions, tried to explain the difficulty of balancing the concerns of Ellenridge residents with those of the project's developer, Moses Braver.

"As Orange County becomes over-developed, people look here. You have a housing slow down in Orange so, of course, it effects this development. So what we are looking at now is a developer who says, 'Look, I own the property. I don't want to put a lot of money into a property that, right now, I can't sell.' You have two sides. Both of them have issues. On the one side, you have the people who are already living there — some of them in the lower units. And then you have a developer who says, 'I didn't invest in this to lose money.' Somewhere in the middle, we sit down and we talk to them. We make sure it's safe. We make sure it's secure. In my neighborhood walks that I'm involved in and started in Ellenville, we go to Ellenridge more than anywhere else in the village."

Water Drainage and Erosion

Harry Finerow, a Ellenridge homeowner since 1989, told Dianne Wiebe in a January 24, 2005 Kingston Freeman article, "Our major concern is water and water runoff, and what will happen now that the development continues above us."

This week Schug admitted, "There's still some erosion control issues. On a slope, you need some kind of retaining walls or some stabilized vegetative growth that takes hold so that water doesn't come down and loosen unstabilized soil. The storm drains are working fine. They are not clogged. But what you have is that some areas didn't stabilize properly and where the vegetation that was there is no longer there. They were not required to install sod — only seed based on the size of the slope but they chose to put in sod. But my opinion, after being up there many times, the sod was just not properly maintained after it was installed."

Fuel Concerns

Gas heat was barred in the original plans but residents complain that big tanks were put in the ground in the newest sections without asking for the homeowner's permission, and that the village engineer signed off on that as well.

"You mean to tell me the lawyers didn't know the community ground here belongs to us?" complained one homeowner.

Current Violations

Kaplan announced at the village board meeting on October 22 that residents of Ellenridge's, "upper portion seemed very pleased with the direction of the discussions. There were a couple of issues on the lower part that we are going to try to resolve, even though they are more of a conflict between management and the homeowner's association. We do have a little leverage with our village issues and hope to be able to resolve them."

Ellenville's village board agreed that Braver had previously been notified in writing that he needed to remove construction debris and abandoned vehicles from the Ellenridge property. After 15 days, the rubbish remained where it was and the board found Ellenridge Holdings LLC in violation.

Mayor Kaplan further explained at the meeting that there were three vehicles in question: a construction trailer on the road leading to the development's upper section, an old pick up truck and a truck bed.

"We told him he has twenty days or by November 11 or he'd face a $50 per day fine. So, in effect, he'd be fined $1,500 per month," said Kaplan.

As for the pickup truck on the property, Braver claimed he needed it on the property to move construction debris from one site to another. The truck is neither registered nor inspected. Village officials are giving him twenty days to move it or get it registered and inspected, or the village would move it and charge Braver. As for the truck bed, the village board agreed to let him leave it on the development's grounds.

Schug also appealed to the board on Braver's behalf, asking that he be allowed to renew, rather than re-file, his ten building permits, which had expired in July. Mayor Kaplan said the difference would be approximately $7,500 to re-file (at $750 per permit) or $350 to renew the ten expired permits (at $35 per permit).

The New Developer

The site's current developer, Moses Braver, recently explained he took over Ellenridge in the middle of 2005 and that he had worked with many people, had been a developer for many years and had never had a problem before this.

"I went into contract with DLK that I would buy the property but they would have to do the roads, and they delayed and delayed, and I couldn't market the development. In the end, I went in myself and finished up the roads. I inherited a headache. I can't fix all the things from the former developer. There's no way. They sold everything. They got the money and disappeared. Not only that, this land is owned by the homeowner's association. We have ten units under construction but no plans to build more right now. Everything depends on how the market goes," said Braver.

An outstanding issue that has plagued the development for many years is that the original plans called for one large water booster station needed to create needed water pressure. DLK previously had gotten around this by installing small individual boosters in each home unit. But both the Ellenridge homeowners and the Village of Ellenville are continuing to push for one large booster.

"It is the developer's responsibility to build the booster station," explained Auerbach. "They have to design it. They have to get it approved by the Ulster County Health Department. They also have to have it approved by our village engineers. Once that is done, the village is in a position, if it is built to our specifications and it meets all those rigorous requirements, to take over the operation of the booster station. It is in the homeowners' best interest that we do that."

What's Next

"This is a project that has really been out there for several decades with at least three developers. Every time it changes hands, it seems to get more complex. It was dormant after the first development when DLK took over. Then it was dormant again for a good ten, fifteen years and then they took an interest in it again and started to build when the [local housing] market started to grow," said Auerbach, trying to put the development's history in context.

"DLK is saying they sold off the rights to the new Ellenridge group and in the meantime, the homeowners are caught in the middle of it. They really are the folks we are most concerned with. The approach we are taking is that the developer needs to deliver what they intended to, and the homeowners need to be assured that they are living in a place that meets their expectations."

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