Oct 12, 2019 3 min read

A $5 million lawsuit filed against Canonsburg Borough last year was recently dismissed.

Borough solicitor Joseph Dalfonso presented to council Monday the decision from Washington County Judge Michael Lucas to dismiss a lawsuit brought by Greenwood Village L.P. The borough had placed cement barriers blocking the developer’s access to its North Strabane property by way of Crawford Street.

“They filed a declaration of taking in which they claimed $5 million in damages,” Dalfonso said.

The suit was filed in November by Zokaites Contracting Inc. (Greenwood) after the borough put up two cement barriers blocking the dead-end side of Crawford Street. Council President R.T. Bell said residents had been calling to report large construction vehicles going up Crawford and continuing on a dirt alley up to the 62.4-acre development site in North Strabane.

North Strabane supervisors had approved the final plan for Greenwood Village – consisting of 233 residential units – with conditions that a new public road be built extending from Crawford, which would be used as an access road, according to court documents.

But the borough “was not a party to this agreement,” Lucas wrote in his Sept. 18 opinion. He wrote that Greenwood never submitted a plan to the borough and no public hearings were conducted.

“I have nothing against the guy,” Bell said of Frank Zokaites, of Zokaites Contracting. “But he’s building his development in North Strabane, and all of a sudden, he needs a way out in Canonsburg, but he never asked Canonsburg.”

The borough filed a preliminary objection to the lawsuit Feb. 21, stating that it never received a plan from Greenwood and that the road can’t handle the heavy equipment and truck traffic used in construction of the development, according to court documents.

“There’s no way that road was built to handle those heavy trucks,” Bell said.

In addition to the cement barriers, the borough also put up a sign prohibiting “dual wheel vehicles,” according to court documents.

A hearing was held in July, during which borough engineer Veronica Bennet of KLH Engineering testified that the borough is concerned for “additional traffic that will result from Greenwood” and its effects on Crawford Street.

During that hearing, engineer Michael Andrewsh testified that the vehicle trip counts on Crawford would “more than double and increase to 1,416 per day,” Lucas wrote in his judgment. He ultimately dismissed the lawsuit, ruling that the borough “properly exercised” its police powers in putting up the barriers.

Lucas mentioned in his opinion that Zokaites didn’t submit plans to the borough or seek their approval for the use or access of Crawford. He wrote that both the borough code and “the voiced interests of Canonsburg residents support the borough’s efforts to temporarily restrict access to unpaved and unimproved portions of Crawford Street,” he wrote.

He also wrote that the purpose of the barriers was the “safety and structural integrity of a borough street.” He also mentioned that the borough wasn’t restricting Greenwood from all property access, just the one that entered the borough.

“Greenwood’s disregard for the ‘rule of law’ in Canonsburg is troubling,” he wrote.

Bell said that he, council and the residents in that area were pleased with Lucas’ judgment.

“We’ve been dealing with this for months, and we were glad the judge ruled that way,” Bell said. “We want our residents to know that we heard their requests and we did our due diligence and what we had to do to represent them.”