Name: Hearing officer overturns county’s conditional use decision - The Times-Independent
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Hearing officer overturns county’s conditional use decision - The Times-Independent

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A land use hearing officer has overturned the Grand County Commission’s decision to not approve a conditional use permit for a bike outfitter operating in a residential neighborhood.
Craig Call, the county’s land use appeals hearing officer, wrote in an email to county officials last week that “the relevant law requires that I approve the proposed conditional use permit.”
Members of the public are also invited to provide comment on conditions for the permit. Those interested can email Call at ccall@andersoncall.com until 5 p.m. May 2.
Call’s decision may put to rest a monthslong land use saga over Escape Adventures, a bike guide service that has spent the last few years rigging and derigging its vehicles and storing equipment on Easy Street in Spanish Valley.
The saga has split the commission, prompted calls for one commissioner to recuse herself and sparked a broader conversation about whether and how to address Moab’s paucity of commercial space while insulating neighborhoods.
“This isn’t occurring in isolation,” said Grand County Commission Vice Chair Kevin Walker during an April 16 appeal hearing. “I think the impacts of commercial activity, especially tourism-based commercial activity, on residential neighborhoods in Grand County is a very big issue for us.”
The discussion over Escape has also proven noteworthy due to the outfitter’s connections to several commissioners. After Commission Chair Jacques Hadler recused himself from all discussions, citing a close relationship with the applicant, the commission during its March 5 meeting voted evenly, 3-3, on a motion to deny Escape a permit. Commissioners Evan Clapper, Bill Winfield and Mike McCurdy voted in opposition to the motion.
The split vote meant the permit was not technically denied, though the commission hadn’t approved it, either. Escape appealed the decision, however. On April 23 Call overturned the county’s decision, meaning Escape is cleared to continue operating in the Rural Residential-zoned neighborhood.
Traffic, noise and employee housing
Opponents of the permit, including Commissioner Trish Hedin, who is also a neighbor of the property in question, argued Escape’s activities have eroded the area’s residential character and quality of life by introducing significant new traffic and noise as employees rig and derig vehicles for commercial mountain biking trips.
During the commission’s March 5 meeting, Hedin — one of the original complainants — said an “overwhelming majority” of neighbors opposed the permit.
About 60 neighbors signed a petition urging the commission to deny the permit and close to 10 spoke up against it during the commission’s March 5 meeting.
Emily Cox, who lives nearby, said she was concerned about additional traffic in a quiet area that also lacks sidewalks for kids riding bikes or walking to their bus stop.
“We really love the serenity, we love the protection that it offers for pedestrians,” Cox said, “and we’re very concerned about the complete lack of infrastructure in the area that would lend itself to safe walking.”
For Hedin, a central part of the issue is that Escape isn’t based in Moab and had operated for several years in the neighborhood without a permit.
“To me, it’s egregious to have commercial properties move into my backyard illegally,” she said. “…And I want to make this really clear: This activity is not supportive of local businesses.”
Escape employee and applicant Merrick Golz said during a Feb. 20 public hearing that he didn’t realize a permit was required to store gear and rig and derig the company’s handful of vehicles.
Golz added that Escape only ran 32 trips out of Moab last year and that most of their operations are conducted at the Moab Cyclery, which the Las Vegas-based company owns.
“We never have had customers come to that [Easy Street] property,” Golz said.
Escape also provides housing for several employees on the property. Golz said he thought the traffic might be worse if those employees held day jobs in town, and said much of the traffic may have come from construction crews building homes on adjacent lots that Escape subdivided.
Clapper agreed.
“It sounds like less traffic than if there was full-time residents or families living out there,” Clapper said.
Hedin, however, said Escape has had a “massive impact” on the neighborhood.
“If it were a truck here or there, I have no problem with housing employees, no problem with that,” she said Feb. 20. “But that’s not what was occurring.”
To recuse or not to recuse?
During several meetings Winfield suggested Hedin ought to recuse herself from the Escape decisions as she’s one of the neighbors who initially filed a complaint about the business.
County Attorney Stephen Stocks said the county has a high standard for recusal. He wrote in an email that Hedin’s case would require a more direct financial tie to rise to the level of a restricted conflict.
“To state it very clearly,” he said on March 5, “it does not rise to the level of a recusal.”
But on Feb. 20 Winfield had suggested Hedin should still remove herself from conversation due to her heavy interest and involvement in the issue.
“There’s also the higher level of just recusing yourself,” Winfield said.
“I believe my moral standards are pretty high,” Hedin responded. “I’m not recusing myself.”
Golz said he wasn’t sure one way or the other whether Hedin ought to have recused herself, but pointed out that she did sit out of a 2022 vote over a conditional use permit for another business on Easy Street.
Easy Bee Farms, a small agriculture operation, successfully obtained a permit to open a farm stand during the commission’s March 15, 2022 meeting.
Hedin said she couldn’t remember why she abstained from that conversation. Later she said the two permits felt like completely different conversations.
“It is an apple to orange comparison,” Hedin wrote in a text. “One is a local business growing food for our community and the other is a business owned out of Las Vegas that is a monster, and this is just one tendril of it. Completely different businesses, and completely different issues.”
The precedent it sets
Still, the question of whether and how businesses should be allowed to operate in neighborhoods dominated part of the commission’s discussion.
Several commissioners said they feared an approval might open the door to a flood of similar applications.
“I think there’s lots of businesses out there who would prefer to do something less expensively on land that’s not zoned for it,” said Walker. “So I feel very reluctant to start opening the door to that.”
That’s something several neighbors repeated.
“I’m just saying, stay downtown,” said neighbor Doug Carroll on March 5. “Don’t inject yourself into our residential areas.”
At the same time, the discussion helped spark newfound concern over Moab’s scant commercial space. Golz said parcels are “impossible to find.”
“I think right now there might be two commercial places for sale,” he said. “And I think one’s almost $2 million … it’s just not affordable or attainable.”
Grand County Planning Commissioner Aaron Lindberg told the commission on April 2 the county ought to consider creating local business-oriented commercial space.
“There’s a lot of commercial spaces around here that’s just used for, like, some rich guy out of town parks his Jeep,” he said. “Which is fine … but every one of those is like, ‘Oh, man, that’s a commercial spot that’s not usable now for essential services.’”
A decision, eventually
While Call didn’t immediately detail his reasons for overturning the county’s decision, during an April 16 appeal hearing he noted that one of the only commercial uses the county allows in in Rural Residential is an “outfitter, guide service and facility.”
“They didn’t say rigging and staging for these uses,” Call said. “They allowed the full-blown use.”
Now that Call has approved a permit for Escape, Stocks said the county commission could vote to appeal the decision to district court or seek guidance from the Utah Property Rights Ombudsman.
Members of the public can also submit comment on suggested conditions for the permit, such as operating hours. Golz has previously said he’s open to many conditions to mitigate Escape’s presence on Easy Street.
“I want to be a good neighbor to the people on that street,” he said. “I want to be helpful … I would just hope that we could find a nice harmony on being good neighbors.”
				




			
		
A land use hearing officer has overturned the Grand County Commission’s decision to not approve a conditional use permit for a bike outfitter operating in a residential neighborhood.
Craig Call, the county’s land use appeals hearing officer, wrote in an email to county officials last week that “the relevant law requires that I approve the proposed conditional use permit.”
Members of the public are also invited to provide comment on conditions for the permit. Those interested can email Call at ccall@andersoncall.com until 5 p.m. May 2.
Call’s decision may put to rest a monthslong...

Hearing officer overturns county’s conditional use decision - The Times-Independent

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