A hearing can add a minimum of four to six weeks to the approval process, time used by the commission and neighborhood groups to understand the project.
"A major, established town like Edison and a site as complex as the Ford property require that we do everything we can to understand the project through the eyes of local residents and community organizations," Mr. Stern said.
Greg Baron, one of the project's developers, said he did not feel comfortable explaining reasons for delays to buyers who did not have construction backgrounds and therefore would not understand the project's complexity.
Those include a "green resident organizer," Liz Andujar, who ensures that tenants understand the project's green elements and, heeding the Obama administration push for sustainable communities, how best to use public transit and recycling.
But one source who worked on Djinn says that there may well have been high-level concerns – if not objecting to the portrayal of the country, then at least failing to understand the project.
The way shareholders understand the project, Samaraenergo's generating plants would be spun off and then merged with some key factories in the region, including a few belonging to Mr. Deripaska.
"I really don't understand the project's goals, I only see it as something that changed the consumption pattern[s] of people in Darfur," said Mohamed Osman, a food security researcher at Ahfad University for Women.
He argued that Rudd as energy secretary, as well as Andrea Leadsom, who was a minister of state in the department, had time to understand the project and be positive about it.
The first part to deciding on a methodology is to understand the project requirements.
