Boulder County staff propose new rules on the expansion of churches, schools

Established schools, lodges, churches and camps in rural Boulder County could be allowed to expand by a set amount if they can mitigate all the impacts of getting bigger -- including traffic, electricity use and water consumption -- if a proposal by the county's Land Use Department moves forward.

For more than a year, county staffers have been working to revise the land use code to make it clearer to institutions of "community significance" what types of changes, including expansions, they'll be allowed to make on their land.

"I think it's important to look at because there is a lot of confusion," said Abigail Janusz, a planner for the county's Land Use Department. "We are hoping to provide some predictability and some clarity."

The Boulder County Board of Commissioners directed staff to begin revamping the rules in the wake of two high-profile expansion requests -- one from the Alexander Dawson School near Lafayette and the other from Rocky Mountain Christian Church in Niwot. The county commissioners denied the full requests from both institutions, saying that the growth would be out of character with the rural agricultural surroundings.

Both the school and the church complained that it wasn't clear what constituted an over-intense use of rural land before they embarked on the arduous and expensive process of asking permission through the county's "special use review" process. (The Rocky Mountain Christian Church has since won in a civil case against the county that claimed the expansion denial constituted religious discrimination.)

The proposed rules, which will be considered by the Planning Commission on Wednesday, outline two options for allowing existing institutional uses in the county to get bigger. They differ in how they would set the amount of expansion allowed: One would relate the amount, in part, to total lot size, and one would relate it largely to existing square footage.

Both would allow expansions only if the applicant can prove that the impacts associated with the new expansion will not be "significantly greater" than that the impacts of the existing use.

Applicants will also be required to purchase a "transferable development credit" for each 500 square feet of new floor area. A transferable development credit represents a commitment by another landowner in the county not to build an allowable 500 square feet on his own land.

This idea was actually pioneered by the Alexander Dawson School last year. When school officials proposed another expansion to the county -- after having their original request turned down -- they submitted a plan to cut traffic and green their buildings, ultimately slashing water and electricity use.

The school also bought an adjacent lot of land that came with a vested right to build a 25,000 square-foot indoor equestrian arena, and school officials promised to extinguish that building right if their 23,888-square-foot expansion was approved.

It wasn't. But the Dawson School's work might have paved the way for the proposed new rules.

"When they went through the process, there wasn't a means to do what they were offering," Janusz said. "This provides those means now."

The changes to the special-use review process that county staff is proposing also go beyond dealing with just expansions.

Among other things, it seeks to provide a pathway for some "nonconforming uses" -- which have to go through the stringent special use review to make any changes -- to become conforming. Nonconforming uses typically existed in an area before zoning laws that would now prohibit such a use went into place around them.

The Stone Mountain Lodge and Cabins in Lyons is one such place. The lodge has been in operation for 120 years, but it is now classified as nonconforming. Which means, in the 10 years Peter and Mindy Makuta have owned the place, they haven't been able to make any changes without going through the special use review process. And fearing the time and money that would take -- without any certainty of getting approval -- the Makutas have chosen not to make any changes. It's a strategy they can't continue for long.

"Just to do something minor, like put a porch on a cabin, you have to go through special use review," Peter Makuta said. "There's my biggest problem. We haven't done anything because of that."

Makuta is hopeful that part of the Land Use Department's proposed rules would allow him to make minor changes using a less-rigorous review process and perhaps allow his business to become conforming. But he's concerned about what, exactly, will be defined as a "minor" change.

"The biggest problem for any business like us is not having a certainty of what we can or cannot do going forward," he said.

Contact Camera Staff Writer Laura Snider at 303-473-1327 or sniderl@dailycamera.com.