BLOOMINGBURG – It's easy to spot the homes developer Shalom Lamm has been upgrading around the village that he's been said to be destroying. They've all got American flags flying out front, and by and large look a bit fresher than most around them.

At his Chestnut Ridge Village development of townhouse units on Winterton Road, where about 100 of 396 approved units have been built to date, crews are busily back to work following the lifting of a recent injunction. The same is true at a shiny new pizza place, neighboring restaurant, and nearby bakery in the center of the village.

The only points of quiet within Lamm's development world in and around Bloomingburg, it seems during a recent car ride around the area with the man, are at the new $5 million wastewater treatment plant he's built, which is awaiting action from the village government that has failed to speak with their community's largest business owner since taking office in March, as well as at his model high-end home at the top of the Seven peaks development he is hoping to finalize before the Mamakating Planning Board this summer.

"I had an appointment to speak with the mayor two weeks ago but then he canceled," Lamm said, stopping the car to speak as new residents in large SUVs and vans passed by, smiling and waving his direction. "We are the engine of economic development here. You'd think the mayor would want to work with us but all I'm seeing are draconian actions meant to hold us back."

He spoke about a new moratorium on building permits, another that would change the rules regarding certificates of occupancy. The legality of both maneuvers seems sketchy at best, given state law's difficulties with spot zoning, or acting against things already approved and/or built. Lamm talks about the lawsuits he feels he keeps getting forced to launch to prove his rights.

No, he will not suddenly up and leave, he says. Eventually, he wins his cases, even with the added expense of having to fight all that's thrown his direction. He's in too deep now, after eight years, to stop.

Lamm speaks of opposing "paradigms."

"We're here, trying to be good neighbors," he says. "The other is obstructionist, infringing on civil rights to the point where they're opening the entire community to crazy liability."

He calls what's occurring "a concerted conspiratorial secular jihad... and it's intolerable."

The construction sites we visit are busy, happy, clean. Yet he's never had such trouble getting approvals on anything from apartment rehabs to exhaust hoods over pizza stoves.

"It's all about delay and delay," he says. "But we will follow the laws..."

He refuses to discuss the recent elections, and various legal actions surrounding it, other than to say that he swears "allegiance to his new mayor." Eventually, we head over to the development at the center of Bloomingburg's battles of the past two years. There's a lot of mud, but the insides of the townhouses are immaculate.

When will sales start, we ask?

"We've been waiting for good weather," Shalom Lamm replied. "I'd say within the next sixty days."

And how were those sales looking?

"We have enormous interest from the Hasidic community," he added. "We'll see what happens..."

Next week: Part II explores Seven Peaks, a new shopping center, mikvahs, and Shalom Lamm's casino housing plans for Wurtsboro.