Oneida County green lights Bangstad to keep business open

The Oneida County zoning committee and department have given Minocqua Brewing Company owner Kirk Bangstad the green light to keep his Front Street retail business open but will seek to confirm that he will meet the parking conditions of his administrative review permit (ARP), the county’s assistant zoning director told The Lakeland Times Thursday.

The ARP requires a six-space parking lot. Bangstad is also asking the county to amend the ARP to forego the parking requirements altogether. 

However, as part of the permit, for which an approval letter was issued March 8, Bangstad was given notice of his appeal rights: According to the county code, a permit applicant who is denied, or who otherwise disagrees with a permit decision, has 30 days to appeal to the county’s Board of Adjustment.

Bangstad did not exercise those appeal rights. The county zoning code does not give the zoning committee the power to amend an ARP.

The county’s assistant zoning director, Todd Troskey, said the department concluded that Bangstad was already meeting many of the conditions of the ARP, such as signage, lighting, dumpster screening, and others, and that the committee, meeting in closed session last week, reached the same conclusion but also wanted the department to substantiate that the parking requirements would be met.

“The committee backed up the department’s decision that as far as [numbers] 2,3,4,5,6 on the approval letter of the ARP, they are meeting those requirements,” Troskey said. “They directed me to meet with Kirk to review the parking area requirements because there’s nothing right now to indicate the size of his parking spots, so I have to confirm that that total area is going to meet [the condition of the ARP].”

As far as the blacktopping of the lot, Troskey said the county would defer to the town on its recommendation to give Bangstad until October 31 to complete the project.

“They backed up our decision that that was the town’s issue to discuss with the owner, that we were not going to get involved in recommendations from the town in enforcement,” he said.

In the meantime, Bangstad can stay open for business, Troskey said. He also said county officials and Bangstad would be meeting to discuss other issues and that the committee felt that Bangstad would have to pursue a new ARP if he wanted the parking requirements waived: “Basically, yes, that was part of the decision yesterday, it would have to be a new administrative review permit,” he said.

The situation has been escalating since May 25, when Minocqua town attorney Greg Harrold sent an email to Bangstad, conveying to him that he could not open because he had not met all the conditions of the ARP. While the town has no jurisdiction over the ARP, it does have jurisdiction over a Revocable Occupancy Permit Bangstad needed with the town detailing the terms for use of the right-of-way parcel for access to his business.

That permit required that the ARP conditions be met to receive the permit.

All that led to a June 7 town board meeting, in which the board recommended that Bangstad be given until October 31 to blacktop his required parking lot and install necessary curb cuts, as well as set up an escrow account to ensure that Bangstad met his obligations.

Still no BOA appeal
This past week, Bangstad sent an email to the Minocqua town board, as well as to various county officials, including zoning committee chairman Scott Holewinski, declaring that the town has no jurisdiction over the ARP, though, to be fair, the town has never claimed it did.

In a June 25 email, Bangstad said the motion at the June 7 meeting to give him until October 31 to complete parking lot blacktopping and curb cuts, and putting money into an escrow account to ensure that those projects were completed, was “ill-conceived at best, and illegal at worst.” 

“It is apparent that the jurisdiction for these decisions falls solely on the county zoning staff and if necessary, the county planning and zoning committee — not the town board, and especially not the town’s attorney, who originally penned a letter refusing to let my company open unless we put ‘blacktop’ on our parking lot, among other requirements,” Bangstad wrote. “County zoning staff are trained professionals hired specifically to work with private sector development teams to answer questions and iron out small issues such as allowing leeway for construction delays as long as such leeway is minor and affects no one negatively.”

Furthermore, Bangstad wrote, if a county zoning official decides that his company needs to put money in an escrow account to ensure that the elements of his ARP were completed in a delayed-but-still-timely-fashion, that would be completely acceptable to him, precisely because the construction elements of the ARP were under the county’s jurisdiction, not the town’s.

“The only element that the town has any control over is the piece of land it decided to take after it realized no one else owned it, which we refer to as the ‘porkchop,’” he wrote. “Because the ‘porkchop’ is in front of my building, thus requiring a town-granted right-of-way to enter from highway 51, the current ARP requires me to sign a ‘revokable license agreement’ with the town to get that needed right-of-way.”

Bangstad said the town was using the Revocable Occupancy Permit to obstruct him.

“One could also call this Revokable License Agreement, as currently constructed, a perpetual blank check to keep me under the thumb of a hostile town board,” he wrote. “While possibly illegal in its own right, this revokable license agreement should only refer to elements of the porkchop.” 

Bangstad wrote that the town was asking him to deposit $30,000 into an escrow account to ensure that the blacktop and curb cuts were finished in a timely manner.  

“The status of my blacktop and curb cut construction is completely out of the town’s jurisdiction, and thus this requirement is egregiously heavy-handed and most likely illegal,” he wrote.

Again, as Harrold pointed out at the June 7 meeting, one of the conditions of the occupancy permit is that the ARP conditions, which include the blacktopping, be completed.

Still, in his email, Bangstad proposed a process by which to move forward, asking that “the zoning team in charge of my case” allow him to open for business and give him until October 31 to complete the asphalt and curb cuts but to request documentation to ensure that he would get the job done before that date.

“Note that early next week I will be filing a request to the county to amend my ARP which exempts me from putting in a parking lot, and curbing my property which will allow for additional street parking — a vastly better land use for the town, county, and my business,” he wrote.

Hartzheim responds
After receiving Bangstad’s June 25 email, Hartzheim wrote a June 28 email to the Minocqua town board and to other town officials. In the email, Hartzheim said that the agreements made at the June 7 meeting were being pursued prior to the latest Bangstad email.

“Last week I received copies of the revised access agreement and newly created escrow agreement from Collin Schaefer [Bangstad’s attorney], to be e-signed by the town,” Hartzheim wrote. “Attorney Schaefer was eager to have them signed by the town so his client would have the ability to open before all required site work was complete as discussed at our last meeting.”

Schaefer told the town attorney that Bangstad would need a few days to put the escrow funds together, Hartzheim wrote. 

“I advised Greg Harrold, who then advised attorney Schaefer, that the town is in receipt of the documents and is ready to execute them as soon as the escrow funds are received,” he wrote. “The next communication we received was the attached email from Mr. Bangstad [the June 25 email].”

Hartzheim added that Bangstad had announced that he was open for business.

“I just wanted you to know that this is not because he has followed through with his commitments that were agreed to at the last meeting,” he wrote. “There is no executed access agreement, no executed escrow agreement or funds, nor has it been verified that the stormwater management plan has been constructed per approved plan.”

Richard Moore is the author of “Dark State” and can be reached at richardd3d.substack.com.