The Bartlesville Development Authority has reached a settlement agreement on two lawsuits filed by Joel Rabin. The lawsuits dealt with the Silver Lake Village Project, and were both filed earlier this year. According to David Wood, "The allegation is highly misleading. During the initial assessment, our environmental consultant identified three areas of wetlands totaling less than one-half acre, and we reported them to the Corps. The Corps determined that the wetlands were not “waters of the United States” and were “non-jurisdictional”.  As a result, no Corps permit was required for us to move forward."

The board voted and approved to settle the cases, however, they maintain that nothing was done wrong in the project. $40,000 will be awarded to Rabin from GBT Realty, the company in charge of selling the building spaces to retailers. Additionally, a 20 acre area of land was dedicated so that future projects can not be built there. Wood says "If additional development occurs, we’ve agreed to assure the planting of a 15’ buffer of native plants around any new compensatory storage ponds constructed on our property. This is consistent with BDA’s vision for the interior of the site, and these buffers would be much easier to maintain than mowing grass-covered slopes.
BDA will be dedicating a required 20 acres of our interior land as a “conservation easement” to the City, thus excluding future commercial development.  As with the buffers, this is also consistent with BDA’s vision for the site, though we expect we’ll ultimately dedicate substantially more than 20 acres. The property wasn’t needed for Phase II, nor is it commercially viable. But it is attractive, forested land, and with some cleanup, we’d like to see it incorporated into the city’s park system someday. To this end, BDA also committed $10,000 towards this goal."
 

Phase II of the Silverlake Village Project was previously canceled, but not cited to the lawsuits, rather that Academy Sports + Outdoors pulled out of the project.

November 25, 2016: November 2016 Initial Story

February 23, 2017: Copy of Lawsuit Filed in February

August 9, 2017: Academy Pulls out of Silver Lake Village