When Does an Application Become an Application?

Vol. IV. No. 13 - The Continued Case of a Potential Gas Station for Troy's South End

Photo by engin akyurt on Unsplash

That question sat at the center of a lengthy and pointed presentation before Troy City Council Monday night — and a single word buried in a September 2024 email may be the most important piece of evidence in the whole dispute.

Attorney Rebecca Simpson, representing Mandeep Singh and his company Troy Station LLC, came back to council chambers armed with a thick binder of exhibits documenting nearly three years of formal back-and-forth between her client’s development team and city planning staff. The binder, which she distributed directly to council members, traces a timeline of correspondence, site plan submissions, engineering reviews, revised drawings, and permit approvals dating back to April 2023.

Singh wants to build a gas station with a convenience store at the corner of Dye Mill Road and South County Road 25A — a parcel that was specifically rezoned to allow it in July 2023. To date, he has spent roughly $588,000 between land acquisition and professional fees. He was, by all accounts, on the verge of breaking ground when Troy’s moratorium on new gas station applications took effect earlier this year.

The city’s official position is straightforward: no formal application was ever filed, no fee was ever paid, and therefore the moratorium applies.

Simpson’s position is equally direct: under the city’s own zoning code definition, an application already existed.

The Email That Raised Eyebrows

One of the exhibit’s that Mrs. Simpson’s binder given to council members was an internal city email dated September 18, 2024 — from city planning staff member Austin Eidemiller to Deputy City Engineer Christy Butera. The highlighted portion reads: “Christy, I have already sent the comments back to the applicant. Can you give me a response to them and I can send it along? Thanks, Austin.”

Read that again: the applicant.

The city has maintained there was never an application. But if there was no application, there was no applicant. City staff’s own internal correspondence used that word — not “the developer,” not “the property owner,” not “Mr. Singh’s team.” The applicant.

Language matters in government. It matters in zoning codes, in legal proceedings, and in the day-to-day communication of a planning department. When a city employee refers to someone as “the applicant” in an internal email, it’s reasonable to conclude that — at minimum — the city was treating this process as an application in practice, even if it wasn’t one in the formal online-and-fee-paid sense.

Simpson didn’t overstate the case. She acknowledged her client never filed the formal online application and never paid the filing fee. Her explanation for why is notable: the city’s own process, as described by experienced local developers including an engineering firm that works regularly with the city — is that the formal online submission is a formality done at the end of the process, after everything has been worked through, because the zoning code requires a decision within 10 days of filing. Submit too early, and it expires before the back-and-forth is finished.

In other words, the system appears to have been set up in a way that discourages early formal filing — and that process worked fine, until it didn’t.

The Verbal Admission

There is also this: Simpson told council that when Singh called city planner Austin Eidemiller shortly after the moratorium passed — calling to say he was ready to begin construction — Eidemiller reportedly told him the moratorium blocked his project, and added: “I have your application sitting on my desk and it’s expired.”

That was verbal, not written, and Singh would have to confirm it. But if accurate, it presents an obvious problem for the city’s argument. You cannot have an application expire if there was never an application.

Where It Goes From Here

Council responded to Simpson’s presentation by sending the matter to a council committee for further review the request to carve out an exception for Mr. Singh in the city’s’ ongoing gas station moratorium.

Council members seemed to express some sympathy for Singh’s situation, noting that after nearly three years of documented engagement with city staff, being shut out over a form and a fee is a hard position to defend.

The committee meeting on this exception is expected next week.

City staff reported that the moratorium runs through August 29th. Singh’s state permit to install underground tanks expires August 1st. The new zoning code — the stated reason for the moratorium — has not yet been reviewed by Planning Commission or City Council and will most likely not be approved by the August 29th time frame.

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