By Kevin J. MacLean

    A lawsuit filed by Andover developer Kevin O’Brien, of O’Brien Homes Inc., against the town’s Planning Board over the Aro Estates project, may be ending soon following Monday’s executive session.

    Planning Board members met at the beginning of their regular-scheduled January 11th meeting behind closed doors for more than two hours with representatives from Kopelman and Paige, the town’s legal counsel.

        The executive session was called for the specific purpose of discussing O’Brien’s lawsuit. The suit was filed in Massachusetts Land Court in June after the Planning Board denied O’Brien’s proposed 135-lot subdivision off Howard Street.

    “My intuition is he [O’Brien] didn’t do his research,” said Emerick Bakaysa, Planning Board chairman, before the meeting. “He thought this was just a small town.”

    The Planning Board has agreed on an undisclosed offer to have town counsel offer O’Brien as a way to move forward.

    The lawsuit challenges the validity of the town’s zoning bylaw related to cluster development and alleges that it is unconstitutional as applied to Aro Estates.

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