News

November 6, 2009

Townhouse plans linked to corruption probe now proceeding

W-Cat’s Whispering Ridge development is on the Nov. 17 Wright Township planners’ agenda.

By Jerry Lynott jlynott@timesleader.com
Business Writer
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WRIGHT TWP. – With little to show after four years, a townhouse development linked to key figures in the Luzerne County public corruption probe is on track to get approval to proceed.

At a special session Thursday night, the Wright Township Planning Commission voted 3-0 to place the Whispering Ridge development on the agenda for the Nov. 17 monthly meeting.

“It’ll be the same situation” then, said Candace Smith, chairwoman of the planning commission.

That’s when the five-member commission will vote on whether to approve the final land development plan submitted by W-Cat Inc.

The company is headed by former Luzerne County Prothonotary Jill Moran. She did not attend the special session.

Moran and her former law partner, Robert Powell, had been partners in the company, but she has since assumed control.

Moran also is cooperating with federal investigators in the ongoing probe that has netted Powell, former county judges Mark A. Ciavarella and Michael T. Conahan and other public officials.

Powell and his wife, the former judges and their wives, and Michael Cestone, a former director of First National Community Bank of Dunmore, which loaned W-Cat $4.5 million for the development, guaranteed the bank notes. Conahan, too, had been a bank director, but stepped down because of the criminal charges against him.

But W-Cat defaulted on the loans and the bank obtained a confession of judgment against the guarantors, demanding payment for the remaining $4.1 million owed.

The publicly traded bank later notified the federal Securities and Exchange Commission that “the terms of the loans were extended in exchange for additional collateral offered to the bank.”

The funding issues were not a concern of the planning commission, said Smith.

“We wouldn’t get involved with that,” she said.

Neither is the slow pace of construction. Only seven of the planned 86 units have been built.

Smith explained to the few people who attended the session that the commission’s responsibility is to make sure the work proposed in the preliminary plan has been accomplished.

The roads and infrastructure are in place as proposed in the preliminary plan submitted in 2004.

W-Cat had one year to complete the proposed work. If it did not, it could seek up to four, one-year extensions. The deadline for the final extension expires later this month.

There was little discussion of the project at the special session by Smith, and other commission members Carl Ungvarsky and David Hollock. The commission discussed it in detail at its Oct. 6 work session, said Smith.

On Nov. 17 the five-member Wright Township Planning Commission will vote on whether to approve the final land development plan submitted by W-Cat Inc.

Jerry Lynott, a Times Leader staff writer, may be contacted at 570 829-7237.

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