With traditional farming and ranching becoming less profitable in Summit County, rural residents are starting businesses that don’t fit neatly into county code.
Kamas was the first to act, creating a new “agricultural tourism” zone for Ballerina Farm’s new store at the western edge of town on Route 248.
Aug. 20, the Summit County Council followed suit by creating an agricultural tourism permitting process only for the east side of the county. The planning department first proposed it as a new zone a couple years ago, but under the new code it’s a conditional use instead.
That means it’s allowed in every existing eastern Summit County zone — but that doesn’t mean it will be easy to get the permit.
Principal Planner Ray Miliner said there are a host of criteria property owners must meet to qualify. First, they already must have greenbelt tax status, a property tax break for agricultural land.
“[The tourism use] has to be accessory to the farm use,” Miliner told the council Aug. 20. “And so you can't just have a couple of sheep out there and then put in, like, a big, giant circus or something.”
In other words, the purpose is to regulate as much as it is to allow ag tourism.
“This is putting base guard rails around it, so you can't just jack up a major commercial center and call it ag tourism on a 5-acre parcel, or 2-acre parcel,” Councilmember Roger Armstrong said.
The tourism activities can’t take up more than 20% of the farm or ranch’s total acreage up to 10 acres.
Other criteria include having compatibility with and mitigating the impact on the surrounding properties, as well as adequate infrastructure for visitors.
Miliner said the new cidery in Marion, Dendric Estate, is an example of a business that would have fit better under the ag tourism umbrella. It was approved in 2022 as a distillery or microbrewery with a guest ranch or lodge, and finally opened this year.
Before voting to approve the ag tourism code, Councilmember Chris Robinson asked about hunting lodges. Some large ranches may want to open their entire acreage to hunting despite the 20% limit in the new code.
Former Kamas City Planner Amanda Curtis, now with the county planning department, said Kamas has interpreted the acreage limit to apply only to a hunting lodge building, for example.
“And then everything else that was conducted outside of that was considered the ag portion,” she said.
Robinson, himself a rancher, also made sure ranches would be eligible under the code which was initially drafted with only the word “farm.”
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