Minocqua town board denies MBC parking and beer garden requests

The Minocqua town board, during an April 5 meeting, denied two Minocqua Brewing Company (MBC) requests at the end of a nearly hour-long back-and-forth between the board and MBC owner Kirk Bangstad. 

One request was to use the Chippewa Street right-of-way for parking and the second request was for a conditional use permit (CUP) so MBC could incorporate a beer garden on its property. 

Members of the town board, though, told Bangstad a beer garden was never really planned for or permitted under the business’s previously approved administrative review permit (ARP). 

As the board asked Bangstad what exactly he wanted to do with MBC, Bangstad first noted how he thinks town supervisor John Thompson should recuse himself from the agenda item. This is because of comments he made on a Facebook page regarding the whole MBC and town situation.

“No,” Thompson said, quick to shut Bangstad down. “Just go on with your thing.”

“I will,” Bangstad said. “But just a warning for due process if there’s future litigation.”

Bangstad said he bought the gas station property on East Front Street about two to three years ago as a new location for MBC, which was previously housed off of Lakeshore Drive just west of Torpy Park.

While board members contended Bangstad hasn’t fulfilled contingencies attached to his currently issued ARP — the most debated being parking requirements suggested by the town — Bangstad said previous owners of the property have never been asked to provide additional parking.

“When I bought the property, there seemingly was an appetite by the town to put parking,” he said. 

When it was a gas station, town board members said, vehicles didn’t have a need to park on the location for extended periods of time. And then when it was a bike shop, the amount of customers typically visiting didn’t, in the town’s eyes, require a need for additional parking. 

But with Bangstad’s proposed use of a tap room and beer garden, the board feels additional parking is essential, town chairman Mark Hartzheim saying at previous meetings parking on the island is at a premium. 

Bangstad suggested otherwise, however, when at one point he said required parking for commercial business is “going the way of the dodo bird because we are a wash of asphalt in America and it’s been decided that it’s bad public policy.”

“If the town likes to have parking, or needs to have parking in this lot, there is this pork chop that is an abandoned right-of-way — it used to be the town road of Chippewa, I believe, I’ve been told that,” he said. “There’s that little slot there, if you need parking, that’s the best place to put parking along that area.”

Bangstad also said the town recently provided the Yacht Club a parking exception that will not require them to expand its parking lot with its outdoor expansion of additional seating on its roof.

“Similarly, I’m landlocked,” he said. 

Board members indicated the Yacht Club can’t be compared to the MBC property, and town supervisor Brian Fricke, at one point much later in the discussion, told Bangstad if he wanted an exception to parking then he should consider putting his desired beer garden on the building’s roof.

Bangstad said the CUP requires five to seven new parking spaces and added he believes “we can achieve this through a revocable license agreement” with him and the town to incorporate parking on the “pork chop.”

He said MBC submitted a proposed agreement to the town and Oneida County.

“So I’m arguing that I shouldn’t be held to a higher standard in terms of the number of parking spots required of me based on minimum parking requirements,” Bangstad said, adding he believes MBC is a good local business that brings a lot of tourism to the area. 

After Bangstad explained his side of the story and told the board what he sought, town supervisor Brian Fricke sounded off. He said he was confused because he thought the town had already given him a parking exemption under the ARP, which the town did and Bangstad admitted that.

“So you’re saying we’re not giving you one but we gave you a parking exemption before we gave the Yacht Club one,” he said. “You were the first one that set the precedent to give them a parking exemption. So we already gave you one, so why are you using them as an example of giving you (another one)? It’s a circular argument.”

Bangstad attempted to argue Fricke’s comments, but Fricke said the town had already given him “concessions” that he wanted “but now you want us to give you parking on top of the pork chop, which I’ve made it known I want to keep green space because I’m tired of having parking all over town, and now you want to make that a parking lot.”

Fricke said Bangstad’s parking proposal to ultimately implement a beer garden “goes against his own argument.”

“The idea was always to have a beer garden and to have that happen in phases,” Bangstad said. 

Fricke asked him why he didn’t do that from the start, and recapped the sequence of events between the town and MBC over the last two years. 

“So, I’m at a loss here,” Fricke said, raising his voice. “Where am I supposed to go with this right now? You’ve pretty much lied to us the last two years! You came in here and you wanted something, we agreed to it … let’s go. Then you came here a year later, we did the same thing, we agreed to something, you sat right there said ‘Yea, let’s do an escrow’ and then my daughter followed you out and (heard you say) ‘Well screw these guys I’m going to the county.’”

Fricke said Bangstad, at the time, then took to Facebook and said the town made him enter into an escrow agreement, though Bangstad was the one who suggested the idea of an escrow agreement to open his business provided he fulfills certain permit requirements. 

“And then on the last meeting (March 21 town board meeting), you go on your little Facebook page again saying how corrupt the town board is,” he said. “And accusing the police officer who has a running car next to yours that they’re there to harass you, which is not true at all! So if anybody needs to recuse themselves it’s probably going to need to be me because I’m pretty pissed off.”

Bangstad asked Fricke what part of his comments he would like him to address first. Fricke responded, saying “how about the lies you told us over the last two years?” 

Bangstad denied ever telling the town any lies. 

He explained that he was a “novice” with regard to how an unincorporated town operates and believes the relationship and arrangement between the county and town is “strange.”

Bangstad said his “frustrations” with the entire process are with regard to miscommunications and “shifting jurisdictions” among the town and county.

“I’m going to correct you on something,” Hartzheim said. “The parking aspect of it is 100 percent the town’s decision. There’s a waiver to what the county requirements are that needs to come to the town.”

As the debate between Bangstad and the board proceeded, shifting from one thing to another that’s transpired between the town and MBC over the last few years, Hartzheim told Bangstad he was using “really flimsy excuses.”

“These are quite ridiculous,” he said. “I understand the position you’re in. You’re saying that the intent from the beginning was to put a beer garden in yet during the entire review and approval process … there was never any mention of an outdoor beer garden and no plan.”

Hartzheim said this was a retail business proposal and if Bangstad wanted to pivot to having an outdoor beer garden, he doesn’t think any town board member would have a problem with it. 

But Bangstad, he said, never identified a suitable property for that purpose.

“This was approved as a retail business site,” Hartzheim said. “And everything we were told is that ‘Don’t worry, most people are just going to pick (beer) up and aren't going to stay here.’”

Hartzheim told Bangstad almost every condition included in the already issued ARP were never met.

“A year-and-a-half after that permit was granted on that property for this business, virtually all the conditions for approval are still not met,” he said. 

Bangstad and Hartzheim both admitted the town board and him could debate issues between MBC and the town “for days.”

And while he continued to plead his case for parking, Bangstad said he has state and national brewers permits on top of brewing beer “in this town since 2016.”

“Where are you brewing beer in this town?” Hartzheim asked.

Bangstad stumbled in his response, and clarified he hasn’t been brewing his beer in Minocqua since he sold MBC’s previous building.

“I’m a brewer that has a business in this town, if my actual beer is not being brewed here at the moment because I don’t have the facilities to do it, doesn’t mean I’m not brewing beer in this town,” he said. “I’m a brewer in Minocqua.”

“Okay,” Hartzheim said and then asked if any town supervisor wanted to act on MBC’s requests, though the back-and-forth carried on for another half-hour or so. 

“Seemingly, we’re getting into the weeds,” Bangstad said. “You’ve asked me to put parking there, I’ve agreed since day one to put parking there, even though I don’t agree we should have parking there, I agreed.”

But how can Bangstad say he agreed but has yet to provide it, Hartzheim wondered. 

“I have provided it,” Bangstad said. 

“You have not,” Hartzheim said. “You’re sitting there lying bald-faced to us here. You put a tent there (for customers to drink beer) where the parking is designated. How can you say that you are providing parking? Then you make up your own rules and say that ‘I’m not going to follow any of this stuff because I’m changing my mind so you need to move with me here and forgive me for not ever complying.”

There’s a trust factor, though, Bangstad said. 

But Bangstad’s track record with the town is terrible, Hartzheim noted, and asked how the town would get into an arrangement with him “to give him some special consideration.”

“I think we need to work our way to a motion,” Hartzheim said again. “Because this is going to be a bunch of circular moves ending up in the same place. We know what you want.”

Prior to the denial of MBC’s requests, the town board approved a CUP request for applicant John Sylla, owner of Forestry Tap and Axe on Highway 70 west, for a beer garden expansion in the property’s backyard. 

“I’ll second that motion (to approve Sylla’s CUP),” Fricke said. “Everything that he said he was gonna do he’s done over there.”

Both CUPs will be reviewed by the county’s planning and zoning committee and be presented at public hearings for further consideration.

Trevor Greene may be reached via email at [email protected].