Appeals court upholds conditional approval for Accord granary project

New York’s Appellate Division, Third Department, on October 29, 2026, affirmed the dismissal of two nearby property owners’ challenge to the conditional site-plan approval for Accord LLC’s granary and seed-mill redevelopment. The ruling in Matter of Bruck v Town of Rochester Planning Bd. leaves the Town of Rochester Planning Board’s approval in place, without costs.

The appeal followed an April 11, 2025, Ulster County Supreme Court judgment dismissing an Article 78 challenge to the Planning Board’s July 8, 2024, resolution. The project is in the Hamlet of Accord, in the Town of Rochester, Ulster County.

The modified plan reduced space and parking i

The owners argued that removing an artist gallery, reducing coworking space and eliminating off-site parking materially changed the conceptual plan approved as part of the property’s Economic Enterprise Overlay rezoning. The court found the changes limited and still in substantial conformance with that plan.

The original plan listed 63 parking spaces: 57 on site and six off site. The modified plan eliminated the six off-site spaces, leaving 57 on-site spaces in the parking plan described by the court. The withdrawn gallery had been allocated four spaces. Coworking space shrank by 421 square feet, and its parking allocation fell from 10 spaces to eight.

The restaurant dispute centered on 25 spaces i

The property owners argued that the restaurant alone required 78 spaces, applying a one-space-per-50-square-feet calculation to 3,914.65 square feet. That was their reading of the code, not the court’s finding. Accord’s engineer supported a different calculation based on one space per three seats. The Town Board accepted the project’s proposed parking calculations, including 25 spaces for the restaurant.

The court said the Town Code authorized the Town Board to determine project parking in general conformance with the code and to waive development standards for Economic Enterprise Overlay projects. It found the Planning Board acted within its authority when it adopted the Town Board’s determination, and that referral to the Code Enforcement Officer or Zoning Board of Appeals was unnecessary. The court also rejected an argument about an unconditioned event space because the Planning Board had expressly declined to approve events as a site use.

Does the ruling establish that construction can proceed? No. It leaves the conditional site-plan approval in place but does not establish that other permits have been obtained or approval conditions met. The opinion identifies no further proceeding or deadline and is marked uncorrected, subject to revision before publication in the Official Reports.