Business

Event barn sparks neighborhood war

An event space called the Barn at Tall Oaks should be finished by October.

By Bill Moss, Published: June 20, 2017

Bill Crane is working long hours alongside his two older sons to get an event barn ready for an October wedding.

The exposed beam structure is almost 4,000 square feet, with a picture window that gives it the look of a chapel. It has 1,800 square feet of outdoor deck and will have a catering kitchen. A bride and groom could descend down a staircase from a loft at one end of barn and walk west toward a setting sun.
The barn looks like a quality addition to the 15-acre piece of land the Cranes call Tall Oaks. But that belies the turmoil that has surrounded the effort by Crane and his wife, Tamra, to get a permit for the structure.
By the time the wedding day arrives in October it will have been two years since then Henderson County Zoning Board of Adjustment granted the Cranes a special use permit for the building, an option that’s allowed in the county’s land-use ordinance even for most residential property. Since then, the Cranes have fought a challenge brought by their closest neighbors, Stan and Jane Shelley, winning appeals in Henderson County Superior Court and at the N.C. Court of Appeals.
But the defendants’ win streak in court has not quelled the uprising against the event barn. If they can’t score in the legal arena, Shelley and his allies are fighting in the political arena. More than 30 opponents, including a number of people who live miles from the Crane property on N.C. 191 across from Rugby Middle School, showed up at a Board of Commissioners meeting on May 1 to express their opinion.
Commissioners told the residents they had no authority to overturn a permit that had been upheld on appeal, twice. But several of the commissioners, including Chairman Michael Edney and Commissioner Charlie Messer, that they were “appalled” that the event barn had been allowed. The commissioners unanimously approved a motion by Commissioner Grady Hawkins directing the zoning administrator to make sure the Cranes were in compliance with the permit and directed the county Planning Board to review whether a “small gathering place,” as it’s called in the zoning code, should be allowed at all in residential zones.

Neighbors challenge permit

Even before the first processional rings out from the Barn at Tall Oaks, as the event space is to be called, Shelley filed a petition, also signed by 76 others, asking the county zoning administrator to revoke the special use permit.
The petition argues that:
• The county’s Technical Review Committee approved the project on the condition that the facility use a public water supply. Crane doesn’t plan to use public water, it said.
• The applicant misrepresented how much traffic would use Bradley and Country roads, which are not made for heavy traffic.
• The Zoning Board of Adjustment approved a site plan that was different from the one opponents commented on.
• A fence is not tall enough to block headlights from the parking lot.
• The Cranes are selling gazebos on their property.
Bill and Tamra Crane rebut the points one by one.
Public water was never a formal condition of the permit, Bill Crane said. The site’s well water has been tested and blessed by the Health Department, he said. A homebuilder, Crane has sold gazebos on a corner of his yard on N.C. 191 when the construction trade was slow. Now, he said, he’s too busy to make any new ones.
On May 22, Autumn Radcliff, Henderson County senior planner, sent Shelley a response to his petition to revoke the special-use permit.
On June 28 the Zoning Board of Adjustment will consider clarifying several conditions of the special use permit but won’t take up “whether the permit should be revoked or is valid” because that’s been litigated and settled, she said.
Among the points the zoning board will review are requirements for fencing and vegetative buffers, the sale of gazebos and the definition of the permit’s condition that “no event may have more than 150 people.” Specifically, “What is the definition of attendees per this condition?”

Opponents spread ‘incorrect information’

Tamra Crane said in an interview that she does not understand what the Zoning Board of Adjustment could take up.
The special use permit “has already been passed in the court here and the North Carolina Court of Appeals,” she said.
As for compliance with conditions, there’s nothing to measure because no events have taken place.
“We’re not even in operation yet,” she said. “I understand that we have to abide by the rules of the permit. And we intend to. We’re not going to stop it just Stan Shelley and Jane Shelley don’t want us too.”
The Cranes say the opponents have misrepresented their plans and scared neighbors with tall tales about alcohol use, traffic, light pollution and noise.
“They have told incorrect information to all these people,” she said. “Bill and I do not drink. We will permit beer and wine but we won’t have liquor. We will have the sheriff’s department here during events. We are doing everything we can to make this a nice facility and they’re only telling them what they want them to hear.”
The Cranes said they were told that during a meeting about the event barn at the Opportunity House, opponents sought to remove a woman who defended the event space.
“It was only because she stood up and said, ‘Have you gone out and looked at it? Do you really want the true story of what was going on?’ They didn’t want to hear that and called the sheriff department to have her removed. They told her she was going to burn in hell,” Tamra said.
“We’re not going to cause any disruption,” she added. “We haven’t been out door to door and asked people to sign petitions and put out letters and just telling people what they wanted them to hear. That’s all people know because that’s all they’ve heard. They’d only heard one. Nope. Not now.”