A Colonie car dealer is crying foul after hearing about the relationship between former Planning Board Chairman C.J. O’Rourke and a local developer.
Nathaniel Bette, son of Kevin Bette, president of First Columbia, hired O’Rourke for general contracting work on a home in Loudonville worth over $1 million, raising Mark Nemith’s suspicion, he said.
I always felt there was a conflict of interest or something very much out of the realm of what would be proper because of the way certain things occurred, Nemith said. `It does answer, at least in my mind, an awful lot of questions about things that happen when you compare now and look at the timelines of both Mr. Bette’s approvals and ours.`
Nemith has a contractual agreement with Wal-Mart, allowing them to build a supercenter on lots 2, 4 and 6, where a former Nemith Volvo car dealership was located. The site plan for the proposal was submitted in 2007, followed by more than a year of traffic mitigation studies. In September, the planning board shot down the conceptual plan after O’Rourke raised concerns about some of the waivers requested by Wal-Mart, such as the positioning of the front of the building not facing the Northway, the utilization of the setback and the extended width of the parking stalls.
A month later, First Columbia sought approval of its concept plan to build three new office buildings, totaling 335,000 square feet, on Plaza Drive. Only one board member, Mike Sullivan, was opposed to it. O’Rourke was absent from that meeting.
Nemith’s attorney, Clemente Parente, said that after going to all of the planning board meetings and reading through the transcripts, the situation is `very hard to swallow.`
At the First Columbia conceptual plan decision, Parente asked that that company be treated the same way as Wal-Mart was. Sullivan also asked that everyone be treated fairly, and noted his concerns regarding the size of the waiver for First Columbia to reduce its number of parking spaces, and what sort of precedent it was setting.
When O’Rourke initially became involved with the project in November 2010, he said he immediately went to Town Attorney Mike Magguilli to make sure it was ethical to be working on a project for Nathan Bette. Magguilli then referred him to the Town’s Board of Ethics, where he was cleared.
`I’m about good governance and full transparency,` he said. `Nobody told me to go to the ethics board.`
In September of 2010, the Colonie Planning Board unanimously voted down the conceptual plan to build a Wal-Mart at the Route 9 corridor. O’Rourke, then serving as chair of the Planning Board, was very critical of the project based on the waivers requested by Wal-Mart. Also present at the meeting was Kevin Bette, who claimed that Wal-Mart had gone back on agreements regarding the use of Auto Park Drive.
O’Rourke was brought on as a general contractor by Nathaniel Bette in November 2010 to build an addition to a home located at 10 Stafford Street, and after he completed that, he was asked to do renovations for the entire house.
Nemith said hiring contracts and putting together the Vanguard Show House project, located at 10 Stafford Road, takes month of preparation, and that O’Rourke was financially tied to the Bettes on this project before the Wal-Mart decision was made.
`They knew who the contractor was going to be months before,` he said. `It’s very suspect and very hard for me to believe.`
O’Rourke said that the Bette project had not even come up during the Wal-Mart decision and that he didn’t start work on the project until November when he was contacted by Nathaniel Bette.
`Nathaniel is not an officer of the town, and he doesn’t hold any position at First Columbia,` he said. `So there is no conflict of interest.`
He continued to say that he found it strange he is being criticized for doing work in his hometown.
`I live in Loudonville and I do 70 percent of my business in Loudonville,` he said. `I find it weird for somebody to think it’s strange that I have a project in Loudonville.`
Nathaniel Bette said the project was completely independent of his father, except for some advice given to him, as well as a loan to pay for the project.
The Vangaurd Showhouse was purchased by Kevin Bette in 2009, and is next to the family’s residence at 12 Stafford Street. On Oct. 20, the Town Building Department approved the addition to the house, according to the building permit.
Also in the permit, which was obtained by The Spotlight under the Freedom of Information Law, it states that the general contractor is First Columbia Construction. Nathaniel Bette said that the company acts as a project manager, and O’Rourke was the general contractor.
While O’Rourke said he was approached by Nathaniel, the younger Bette said O’Rourke had come up to the house and gave him his card when asking if there was anything he could do on the house.
`He came over to the house during the week, gave me his card and asked if there was any work that needed to be done because things had slowed down for him,` Nathaniel said. `He had really good numbers and came in as the lowest bidder. So we brought him on to do stuff.`
When later asked to clarify when he first made contact with Nathaniel Bette of the project, O’Rourke said he didn’t know for sure.
`I’m not into semantics,` he said.
Parente said that while there may have been a decision by the ethics board and that there was full disclosure to the town, he has issue that none of this was ever made public.
`I have difficulty with that when really the disclosure should have been to the public,` he said. `Not simply to an internal organization.`
When asked if there was going to be any legal action taken by Nemith, Parente said the main goal is to have their project looked at objectively and fairly.
`Anything that we can do to move this process along, we will do, but that’s as far as I’ll say on that,` he said. `We want our project to be reviewed in a fair and impartial matter. If we think it wasn’t then, we’re going to have to bring that up.`
Parente also said it is up to Wal-Mart’s attorneys on whether they would want to proceed with any legal action. One of Wal-Mart’s attorneys, Bob Sweeney, has not returned phone calls made and the other, Victor Caponera, is currently out of the country.
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