Having cleared perhaps its final legal hurdle, Young Israel of New Rochelle is close to beginning the construction of a new synagogue that has been held back by community opposition, approval processes and lawsuits for more than a decade.Congregational leaders hope to be in their new 30,000-square-foot home by Passover, or spring, of 2008.

The state Court of Appeals said Thursday that it would not hear a neighbor’s case against the city of New Rochelle’s zoning board, which approved the synagogue project in 2003.

“This really was the last of the appeals,” said Kathleen Gill, deputy corporation counsel for the city.

The neighbor who brought the suit, Edward Halperin, could try to interest the U.S. Supreme Court in the case. Asked yesterday whether the case was over, he would only say, “I don’t know.” He would not comment further.

Halperin had argued that the zoning board did not adequately consider the impact of the new synagogue before making its decision.

Young Israel of New Rochelle, a fast-growing Orthodox congregation, first announced in 1993 that it had outgrown its synagogue, a former church at 1228 North Ave., and would build a larger one a short distance away at 1149 North Ave. From the start, neighbors of the congregation’s new property insisted that a multistory synagogue would be out of place there � too big, too loud, too busy.

The synagogue proposal would become one of New Rochelle’s most contentious issues in memory. City Hall received thousands of letters about the plans and hundreds of residents attended public meetings over the next several years.

The congregation had to take on more than $1 million in legal costs. More significantly, the cost of the project, once estimated at $10 million, has ballooned by $5 million to $6 million because of rising construction costs. The original contractor hired for the project backed out last year because of soaring costs, so the congregation had to re-bid the project.

TJN