Developers Need to Form an Early and Comprehensive Plan.
Aug 7, 2025
In today’s construction environment, developers need to form an early and comprehensive plan to reduce uncertainty and ensure that their projects stay on track.
Indeed, large construction and redevelopment projects can encounter obstacles not only from normal construction delays, but also from dilatory legal challenges initiated by outside parties. Competing developers, community groups and/or adjacent property owners can use administrative challenges and legal tools to drive up development costs, blow construction timelines, and derail project sequencing. These challenges, while lawful, are often used to exact changes in the project to the challengers’ benefit.
Opponents can intervene early by filing objections through zoning boards and/or triggering environmental reviews under statutes such as New York’s State Environmental Quality Review Act (SEQRA). Zoning objections will focus on land use code compliance and traffic issues, while the environmental reviews address statutory requirements focused on environmental impact mitigation. In both cases, agencies must conduct hearings and issue formal responses, which can delay permitting, prolong the approval process, and create uncertainty before construction even begins. Municipal inspectors may also be asked to issue stop-work notices in response to alleged code violations.
Even after the land use agencies issue permits, however, these outside parties can use legal challenges to disrupt the project by appealing the agencies’ decisions and seeking temporary injunctions in civil court to suspend site work during pendency of the appeal. Moreover, new legal challenges over site access, prescription and/or related easements often follow to further delay the project.
Such delays not only drive-up costs, they can also negatively impact the financial structures tied to the project. Developers can be faced with financial challenges such as misaligned loan maturities, labor scheduling issues, and cost overruns due to inflation in materials and services. Lenders may also revise financing terms, and investors may alter funding commitments, if the project is severely delayed.
Developers can push back on such third-party interference by challenging the intervenor’s “standing” (aka legal right) to challenge the project. In most jurisdictions, the intervening parties must demonstrate a direct interest, such as property ownership nearby or a direct environmental harm, to file objections or legal actions. Legal standing thresholds vary by state, however, and some jurisdictions allow community organizations, veiled competitors and/or nonadjacent residents to bring challenges.
To address these variables, developers should conduct legal modeling before the project begins to identify timing risks and align project schedules with potential regulatory and litigation hurdles. If litigation ensues, the developer must be ready to file prompt motions to dismiss such claims, request expedited hearings, and/or post a bond to offset any injunction issues. Larger projects should also coordinate early with municipal legal counsel to ensure a proper record to preempt anticipated objections under zoning and environmental rules.
Notably, many municipal and state agencies are refining their review structures to manage procedural challenges through the enforcement of formal timelines, establishing documentation thresholds, setting staff response deadlines, and requiring appeals to meet stricter documentation criteria.
Simply put, large construction and redevelopment project teams must create timelines that consider both (i) design, budget and construction issues, and (ii) a regulatory and legal response plan. Developers should also develop an early communication strategy with public agencies and the community at large. Such comprehensive planning can reduce uncertainty and help projects stay on track.
Originally published on Weebly