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Snyderville Commission Studies Legal Path For Colby School To Become Bed And Breakfast

Snyderville Basin Planning Commission

As we’ve reported, the Snyderville Planning Commission is still working toward a decision about the proposal to revive the former Colby School/Snowed Inn site as a Bed and Breakfast inn.

The panel is pondering how the project can meet a legal condition that is essential for a Bed and Breakfast.

The owners of the Colby site want to renovate the building with eight guest rooms and a kitchen.   

But Snyderville Chairman Ryan Dickey told KPCW lodging isn’t allowed in that Rural Residential zone unless it’s a Bed and Breakfast Inn, which has to have an owner-occupied unit.

He said that requirement makes sense.  

“We think that, the fact that an owner of that property running the Bed and Breakfast is in the neighborhood, knows the neighborhood, walks the dog, has a vested interest in the property value of the neighborhood—that that in itself is a really important mitigation for allowing lodging in the Residential Zone.  The application describes that a caretaker, probably a paid caretaker, would be the owner-occupant and conceivably would have some ownership interest in the corporation.   That clears the hurdle of owner-occupancy, and I think that’s something that we’ve just been digging in on and really trying to unpack whether that meets the bar.”

Since the property is held by a corporate LLC, the Snyderville Commissioners are trying to define who the owner-occupant would be.    Dickey said there could be a range of options.       

“Perhaps we need a controlling interest in the corporation, all the way down to, if they have a strict definition of owner, if they have 1-1000th of the corporation, they’re an owner and they’re an owner-occupant.   The challenge here is we don’t have information from the applicant yet about who that caretaker, who the owner-occupant would be.  And so we can approve the CUP and handle that back to the business-license process.  We could condition it in a certain way, sort of without knowing who the owner-occupant is.  Here’s the conditions  an owner-occupant has to meet when they go through business licensing.”

A secondary concern, raised by neighbors to the Colby, is that the location could host special events, with resulting impacts for parking, lights and noise.   But Dickey noted that the county has an existing process to obtain a Special Event Permit.      

“I think we’ll probably, sort of lean on that Special Event Permit process to handle events.  But probably something we’ll work through is, just making sure that we’re clear on what is an event that doesn’t normally occur at the permitted use such that—a Bed and Breakfast.  We’ve probably all been to, driven by a Bed and Breakfast with a wedding going on.”

Snyderville Planning Chairman Ryan Dickey.

Known for getting all the facts right, as well as his distinctive sign-off, Rick covered Summit County meetings and issues for 35 years on KPCW. He now heads the Friday Film Review team.
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