BLOOMINGBURG — In the tiny Village of Bloomingburg, 100 new residents is enough to back up traffic and swing an election. Four hundred new families will change the face of the village.

And five thousand families?

Five thousand families could change the future — not just for Bloomingburg, but the entire Town of Mamakating and beyond.

Some say that future will never happen, but others have already resigned themselves to their fate as another Kiryas Joel.

The blueprint is laid out in black and white in documents published last week that detail plans by developers of the high-density housing project Chestnut Ridge to continue expanding on the development, adding potentially 5,000 homes over the next 15 years.

“The developers of Chestnut Ridge have worked for 7 years in complete secrecy to achieve a fully approved project (Phase I),” said one 2013 document marked Very Highly Confidential. “It is intended to be a transformative development; building a secure, affordable, growing Hassidic community that will ultimately accommodate thousands of families.”

The documents were unsealed in a federal discrimination suit filed by companies owned by Chestnut Ridge developers Shalom Lamm and Kenneth Nakdimen against the village and town governments. They include developers’ proposals, executive summaries, slide presentations and emails. The documents, dated between 2011 and 2013, compare Chestnut Ridge to the Hasidic village of Kiryas Joel in Orange County, which has about 4,400 homes and is mostly insulated from non-Hasidic influence. Because of Bloomingburg’s small size, one document states that the entire village can be controlled by Chestnut Ridge residents.

“With the initial occupancy of these homes, the owners of Chestnut Ridge will effectively control the local government, its zoning and ordinances,” a 2013 summary said.

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