Opponents of a 34-acre business park under construction on Hedges Pond Road in Cedarville filed a lawsuit Thursday to try to stop development of the site, which they say is a historic Native American cultural land that should be preserved.
Seventeen residents filed the suit against Plymouth Select Board members, Standish Investment Group – the developer behind the project – and the Plymouth Foundation.
The plaintiffs, who include the Community Land and Water Coalition, tied to environmental lawyer Meg Sheehan, had informed the town and other defendants last month they intended to sue if the work didn’t cease. It has not.
Plymouth Town Manager Derek Brindisi declined comment on the complaint’s allegations Friday, saying only that the town is “in receipt of Meg Sheehan’s claim and are prepared to defend the town against her allegations.”
The group is asking a judge to halt work at the site, which has been ongoing since January. The developer began extracting whole trees by their roots and removing topsoil and vegetation, the suit says.
The site at 71 Hedges Pond Road is a “globally rare Atlantic Pine Barrens ecosystem” and the home to rare species and a Native America burial ground, the suit says.
Town Meeting voted unanimously in the fall of 2018 to re-zone a portion of the land to create the Cedarville Village Enterprise District, which allows for light industrial and commercial uses to help increase the town’s commercial tax base and create jobs.
A number of other parcels, 134 acres in total, were placed in conservation.
In July 2022, the town sold the rezoned land to the Plymouth Foundation, which in turn sold the property to the Standish Investment Group, the developer, for $3,450,000, according to the notice of intent to sue filed last month.
Standish is owned by Eric Pontiff, a real estate developer and cranberry grower for Ocean Spray.
“Mr. Pontiff and his companies have clear-cut and mined hundreds of acres of forest in Plymouth and Carver,” said the lawsuit filed by attorney Caroline Smith.
Pontiff called the lawsuit’s allegations “unfounded and unfactual.”
“She’s going to continue to waste the town’s resources and the taxpayers’ dollars,” he said, referring to Sheehan.
He said the land has “no greater Native American or biodiversity value than any other land in Southeastern Massachusetts. The Native Americans traveled all across Southeastern Massachusetts.”
“If any of the items Meg is saying were true,” he added, “we would not be moving forward.”
The plaintiffs are asking for court orders ‘to stop all activity on the property that causes damage to the environment, actual or probable, including removal of trees and vegetation, ancient topsoils and earth…”
Town boards have repeatedly rejected efforts to stop the project.
Earlier this month, the Plymouth Zoning Board of Appeals turned down a petition to halt construction at the end of a meeting during which 24 opponents of the project spoke.
Despite impassioned pleas from the standing-room-only Town Hall crowd, the ZBA voted 3-to-1 against rescinding its permits. The board also declined to issue a cease-and-desist order to stop work at the site.
Standish Investment Group plans to develop a four-building complex on the site.
The complex will include a 176,000-square-foot warehouse with multiple loading docks, a 75,000-square-foot recreational facility with two hockey rinks, and two 20,000-square-foot buildings suitable for wholesale operations. Pontiff said the site will also include a lumber yard.
The plan includes removing 270,000 cubic yards of sand and gravel to create a level tract for the business park. The site has already been largely clear-cut since the building permit was issued in January, with just a buffer of trees still standing along most of the parcel’s borders.
Plymouth Foundation officials could not be reached for comment, and Sheehan did not respond to a request for comment.
Andrea Estes Can be reached at andrea@plymouthindependent.org.