by Nicholas J. Pinto-Wong, Contributing Editor

The oraganization opposed to the mayor’s plan for developing Assembly Square is considering a lawsuit against the city, which will challenge the changes to the zoning ordinaces passed April 22 by the board of aldermen.

“We’re considering filing a legal appeal, but we haven’t made any decisions yet,” said William C. Shelton, president of the Mystic View Task Force.

“The Mystic View Task Force has never pursued any kind of legal action unless we were persuaded that what we were fighting against was actually illegal and that our case was winnable,” Shelton said. “That’s born out by the fact that every one of our appeals and motions has been sustained. We don’t file frivolous lawsuits.”

Shelton said that the basis for the potential suit is that the new zoning for Assembly Square violates Massachusetts law. “The effect of the new zoning is that different landowners can do different things with their property depending simply on who they are,” Shelton said.

The Mystic View Task Force will meet in the next week to decide whether to proceed with the lawsuit, he said.

“We’ll sit as a group and ask, ‘Do we believe in this project?’ We’ve got to believe that this is really worth working on,” Shelton said.

“If we do press on with it, we’ll be working with Art Kreiger and Doug Wilkins of the Anderson and Kreiger law firm, which specializes in environmental and land-use cases. They’ll be working on the case on a fee-for-service basis,” Shelton said.

The organization gets more than half of its funding from individual donations. The rest comes from foundation grants, Shelton said.

The goal of the lawsuit would be to stop the current plan for development from moving forward, Shelton said. “Our goal is to see a development on the Assembly Square site that will conform to state law and serve the community. If the Assembly Square Limited Partnership can’t provide that, the city should go to a developer who can. There are a number of developers interested in building a plan like the one we’ve developed. One of them, Forest City Enterprises, has said publicly that they have offered to buy the site from the A.S.L.P, but that they received no response to their offer,” Shelton said.

“The point is, even now, at this stage, there are other developers who are interested in the site and want to build something good for the city. The city still has plenty of options, and plenty of opportunities to get out of a bad deal and work on building a good one,” Shelton said.

“Our group only opposes things that are clearly not legal. If it’s not legal, it shouldn’t exist. We think a zoning ordinance can be written which will be legal and will produce a better development, right now.”