The City of Tacoma’s lawsuit against developers proposing to convert the Northshore Golf Course into a massive housing development is a good move.

And that’s not just NIMBYism talking.

Northeast Tacoma residents have been angry over earlier legal bumbling by the city in handling the application to build 860 residential units on the 388-acre property. They have accused the city of not doing enough to block the proposal.

But the city can’t try to block the project simply because the neighbors object. City officials have to be on solid legal ground if they reject the project.

That’s what the lawsuit, filed last week, is all about. The city has every right – in fact, has a duty – to resolve as quickly as possible the key legal question at the center of the land-use dispute.

Simply put, the issue is whether agreements with the city dating back to 1979 and 1981 bar the use of the golf course property for anything except golf and open space.

As the city notes in the lawsuit, that is a matter of contract law, which the hearing examiner who customarily rules on land-use applications is not empowered to decide.

Whether the city approves or disapproves the developer’s application in the normal hearing examiner process, the validity of the open-space agreements will remain in dispute.

So it makes sense for the city to cut to the chase, so to speak, and seek a definitive court ruling on the contract issue. If the city wins, the land-use application is dead in the water. If the developer and the owner of the golf course win, the city has to weigh the developer’s application in the usual and legal manner.

It is a fact that the owner of the Northshore Golf Course agreed in a 1981 application for an open-space tax exemption that the “use of such land shall be restricted solely to golf course and open space.”

The city contends this agreement and another one signed the same year when part of the original golf course was developed with homes and condos – as a planned residential development – still apply. The course owner and the developers maintain they don’t.

Which is why this court case is necessary. There is no telling how the story will end. The developers, for their part, are suing the city for $22 million, claiming the city has illegally sought to stymie their plans.

Northeast Tacoma residents are legitimately concerned about the project’s potential impact on schools, traffic and natural features. But all of those questions, including the validity of those 1981 promises, have to be settled according to the law.