The legal fight over a proposed 332-unit mixed residential development in Saco, the Lincoln Village development, will continue up to Maine’s highest court.

In mid-September, counsel for the developer, Loni Graiver of Graiver Homes, filed a notice of appeal after a Maine Superior Court justice ruled for the city of Saco in August.

The Supreme Judicial Court has yet to assign a briefing schedule for the case.

In October 2023, the Saco Planning Board rejected the development on final approval, finding that it did not meet requirements on five criteria: traffic; sewage disposal; aesthetic, cultural and natural values; conformity with local ordinances and plans; and impact on adjoining municipality.

Graiver filed a suit appealing the decision, arguing that the Planning Board rejected his project on final approval after giving it the green light on preliminary approval, even though he had complied with additional changes requested by the Planning Board and the “facts or circumstances” of the project hadn’t changed.

The Superior Court ruled that the Planning Board is not bound by its factual findings in an application for preliminary review when making a decision on final subdivision approval.

The court did, however, say that  it would remand back to the Planning Board to seek “additional findings” on the body’s position change on some of the criteria between preliminary and final approval. But because a developer must succeed on all criteria, and the court upheld the Planning Board’s findings on traffic, it still rejected the appeal.

While it wound through the approval process, the development generated significant pushback, largely spearheaded by the community group Save Saco Neighborhoods.

Graiver, reached by phone on Sept. 25, said that he thinks that the appeal will focus on whether the Superior Court was right to affirm the Planning Board’s final traffic ruling.

Graiver also said he will be filing a federal lawsuit in U.S. District Court over the development’s rejection in the next few weeks but declined to elaborate on the arguments he will make in the suit.

Saco’s Director of Communications and Human Resources Emily Roy did not respond to the Courier’s request for comment.

“The (Superior) court correctly determined that the Planning (Board) did not err when it concluded that the appellant did not meet its burden as to all 20 criteria required to be met under 14 M.R.S. section 4404 and local authority,” wrote Saco’s legal counsel Daniel Murphy of the firm Bernstein Shur when asked for comment.

Cases regarding residential developments do periodically make it all the way up to the Maine Supreme Judicial Court.

In 1969, Maine’s highest court ruled for the city of Saco in Boutet v. Planning Board of City of Saco, a case that involved a rejected residential development.

Last year, the state’s Supreme Judicial Court heard a challenge to a condominium development in Munjoy Hill and sent the decision back to the city of Portland, ruling that it could not weigh in on the Planning Board’s approval of the project because it lacked documentation.

Graiver has developed a number of residential projects in southern Maine, including the Cumberland Village Foreside Apartments in Cumberland and a 36-unit development at Brunswick Landing.