Courtesy photo
The 373-acre meadow on Sweetwood Ranch is under a conservation easement held by the Colorado Cattlemen’s Agricultural Land Trust.
Sweetwood plan causes beef in Routt County
Cattlemen’s trust says guest ranching can support cattle operations; some neighbors wary
Sunday, February 20, 2011
Steamboat Springs — Neighbors of Ryan Wood’s Sweetwood Ranch who protested plans for guest ranch operations on the property, along the lower Elk River, said last week they had very different expectations for the ranch’s use based on the land’s original conservation easement.
The ranch was under a permanent conservation easement that was held by the Yampa Valley Land Trust until Wood purchased the ranch as RSW Holdings for $5 million in September 2007. He promptly had the easement transferred to another entity, the Colorado Cattlemen’s Agricultural Land Trust. The new easement holder has told the county it doesn’t have a problem with Wood’s plans.
And county officials pointed out last week that conditions of the prevailing conservation easement held by the Colorado Cattlemen’s Agricultural Land Trust could not be a factor in their deliberations about Wood’s request for a special use permit.
The permit would allow him to house and feed overnight guests, host receptions and offer fishing, horseback riding and hiking on the ranch. Wood also seeks to host special events with as many as 200 people.
The Routt County Planning Commission voted unanimously Thursday night to table Wood’s application for a special use permit until April 7, when a new hearing will be held. The commissioners asked for more details about how Wood and his staff would manage the large special events.
Planning commissioners discussed the possibility of breaking Wood’s application in two and expressed apparent willingness to recommend approval for the guest ranch to the Board of Routt County Commissioners, while tabling the special events request only.
When Woods said he hadn’t contemplated that possibility before the meeting, veteran Planning Commissioner John Ayer moved to table the entire discussion. The tabling means a planned hearing this month with county commissioners will be postponed until later in April.
In a letter to county officials dated Feb. 12, John C. Doolittle, who owns a home on Diamondback Way overlooking the ranch from Elk River Mountain Ranch Subdivision, wrote: “The range of activities contemplated by Mr. Ryan Wood in his permit request …goes far beyond any activities contemplated in the original conservation easement granted by the Yampa Valley Land Trust to Bill and Cynthia May (the previous ranch owners) and for which favorable tax treatment and monies were exchanged for this contractual event. … Additionally, homeowners on adjacent lots bought their property based on the terms in this conservation easement contract.”
County Commissioner Doug Monger said the terms of the easement are not a factor in determining if Wood’s request fits the county’s master plan and zoning regulations.
Beef, naturally
Wood has established a natural beef operation, Sweetwood Cattle Company, on the ranch. Wood Ranch LLC also owns three home sites in Elk River Mountain Ranch.
He is seeking permission to build a three-bedroom lodge and a commercial kitchen allowing him, with the use of existing cabins, to host as many as 20 overnight guests and host receptions and events for as many as 200 people on 383 acres of the 525-acre ranch.
“This is a great opportunity to build a business and to have people out into the county,” Wood said Wednesday.
Wood said he was not contemplating guest ranch operations at the time he transferred the conservation easement.
“I envision this as a private property that can host large families or small corporate groups,” Wood said. “We get a lot of people calling and asking if they can come stay here. There’s great fishing with mountain biking nearby and the Hot Springs Trail is right across the road.”
Educating guests about natural beef is part of his intent, Wood added.
Wood said he was interested in working with his neighbors to agree on a reasonable way to measure and limit the noise created by functions at the ranch. His proposal includes using shuttle vans to limit the traffic impacts the operation might have.
Everyone signed off
Chris West, executive director of the Cattlemen’s Trust, said Wednesday that although a transfer of conservation easements is not typical, all of the involved parties — the Yampa Valley Land Trust, the USDA/Natural Resources Conservation Service, the county and Great Outdoors Colorado, which also had a financial interest — all signed off on it. The terms of the easement were amended in the process.
“The federal agencies would not have signed off on the amendment if it diminished the easement,” West said. “We’ve strengthened the conservation values by adding 70 acres of hay land, conserving another half-mile of fragile riparian habitat on the Elk River and moving a homesite off a ridgeline.”
In a letter to the county, Shannon Skelton, a fisheries biologist and president of CFI Global Fisheries Management, confirmed that his firm had undertaken extensive stream channel, fish habitat and riparian plant restoration and enhancement on three miles of the Elk River on Wood’s behalf.
The original easement on the S-S May Ranch was valued at $900,000, meaning the overall value of the property was diminished by that amount. Of the total, the May’s donated $470,000.
Doolittle, one of more than 15 neighbors who wrote to the county regarding Wood’s permit request, ventured that some, if not most, of the outside funds that contributed to the easement came from Routt County taxpayers. However, records on file at the county attorney’s office reflect that was not the case — the source of the other $430,000 was not the local Purchase of Development Rights program funded by local property taxes.
Monger referred to the files, which show the $430,000 comprised federal funding from a Farmland Protection Grant authorized by the Natural Resources Conservation Service, through Routt County.
Scenic exposure
West said the original YVLT easement allowed a guest cottage. West wrote in a Jan. 31 letter to County Planner Jake Rosenberg that the proposed guest ranch operations at Sweetwood Ranch are “specifically permitted as a compatible commercial use,” in its easement. In addition, he wrote that the residential structures described in the site plan meet the limitation for residential square footage within a five-acre building envelope described in the easement.
The county recently approved a conservation easement, secured in part with Purchase of Development Rights funds, on Del’s Triangle Three Ranch, where there is no agricultural activity taking place, but where daily horseback rides for guests are a staple.
“The scenic tours expose people to the area’s ranching heritage, and that’s a pretty important use of the property,” Megan Manner, project manager for the land trust, said in October 2010.
West said that his organization holds a conservation easement on the Focus Guest Ranch straddling the Colorado/Wyoming state line in North Routt. And the Nature Conservancy holds an easement on Vista Verde Guest Ranch, also in North Routt.
Those longstanding guest ranch operations pre-dated the conservation easements and would have factored into the appraisals that were the basis of the easements.
West told the county that guest ranch operations can be an important part of the business plan of cattle ranches.
“Ranching is an honorable, but very difficult, business, and one that has significant hurdles for families to overcome…CCALT understands that in order to make a living, flexibility in the ranching operation is crucial,” West wrote. “CCALT currently holds conservation easements on more than 370,000 acres across the state, many of which run guest ranching operations. Guest ranches are an excellent way to supplement income from agriculture and educate the public about Western heritage and land ethics.”
— To reach Tom Ross, call 970-871-4205 or e-mail tross@SteamboatToday.com
Comments
greenwash 2 years, 3 months ago
Ryan can have as many parties as he wants, sell as many steaks as he can and still NEVER cover the $5 million + improvements he has into the ranch.NEVER EVER .(The realtor probably left that part out.}
This is not about a struggling ranching family trying to survive.It about a millionaire looking to impress his buddies.
wzlover 2 years, 3 months ago
Great story Tom Ross. There were obviously misconceptions about conservation easements, thanks for clearing them up.
boatwatch 2 years, 3 months ago
It may be a great story, but not the true story. The most misleading sentence is: "He [Ryan Wood] promptly had the easement transferred to another entity, the Colorado Cattlemen’s Agricultural Land Trust." This sentence implies that the Yampa Valley Land Trust willingly gave up the easement to the Colorado Cattlemen's Land Trust. This is far from the truth and is the essence of the abuse by Ryan Wood in this entire matter. Tom Ross does not desribe the significant legal pressure Ryan Wood and his attorneys waged against the YVLT to expand what development was allowed under the original easement. The article does not tell about the two YVLT Board members who were asked to resign because they were compromised in their Board duties. The article does not mention the six figure legal expenses that the YVLT spent to defend itself against Ryan Wood's legal pressuure to expand how much land he could develop .The article does not report that Ryan Wood did not stop fighting the YVLT until he got his way through intimidation and willingness to wage a legal battle far greater than the YVLT could ever afford. Tom Ross does not report many of the true facts. I guess facts don't really matter in the Steamboat Pilot.
1999 2 years, 3 months ago
thanks boatwatch!
beentheredonethat 2 years, 3 months ago
This is not about a struggling ranching family trying to survive.It about a millionaire looking to impress his buddies.
get lost, woods.
Fred Duckels 2 years, 3 months ago
If boatwatch's charges are valid we need to know the true story. Our handshake community that was so attractive to outsiders does not need tactics introduced that will destroy that character. The May's ranch was worth more if restrictions were lifted.
peevla 2 years, 3 months ago
Hi and happy days to all. The way the intent of this conservation land trust has been subverted through legal machinations reeks of malfeasance. Can it not be proven that they are deliberately dodging previous agreements? Such deliberate activity sounds like conspiracy to "take" the rights of the public trust and as such might be deemed illegal. Mssrs Woodward and Bernstein, where is the opinion of the rarely quoted or sourced county attorney? Please tell me he provides interviews and answers to the local media?
Provided for our dubious consumption are the words of Wood's fellow rancher and candidate for least informed public servant ever Doug Monger that "the terms of the easement are not a factor in determining if Wood’s request fits the county’s master plan and zoning regulations." In the interest of public fairness and preserving not just one but all conservation easements from similar machinations perhaps Routt County can draft an ordinance preventing intentional downgrading of conservation intent. Let's either do some work to prevent this like an unwished for buildup of snow or prepare to be buried under an avalanche of conservation "convention" centers.
Doug Matthews 2 years, 3 months ago
"Educating guests about natural beef is part of his intent, Wood added." This is a crock of crap. He wanted to play the gentleman rancher card, started a beef company, and found out that it wasn't as easy as he thought. Now his purchased cattle are raised in a front range feedlot, just like any other commercial steers, They are not grass fed, locally raised, and there are no claims of no antibiotics or other supposedly healthy cultural specifics. If you want to get true, locally sourced and raised grass fed natural beef, you have to buy either River Ranches Beef or Yampa Valley Beef. Peole who think that the natural foods thing is cool, and jump in without understanding what true locally sourced foods are, and mistakenly bill themselves as such, are doing a great disservice to the people who have worked long and hard to build a business from scratch.
Scott Wedel 2 years, 3 months ago
But what is wrong with the proposed guest ranch operations? Unless they are run in some bizarre fashion, they are entirely compatible with ranch operations. My bigger concern about guest ranch facilities would be if they decided to fill their vacant rooms with long term rentals to those that work in SB. And so used their guest ranch permit to operate multi-family housing. Which I know has happened on some guest ranches.
This is a resort area and the economy has long been driven by people that bring money here in search of a lifestyle. Any longtime local contractor can say how many times they have done projects for the latest owner of some notable property.
It is special events permits that will need to be seen if it can be mitigated to be acceptable. County has previously decided that not all properties have the capability to mitigate the issues so a special events permit is certainly not a right of ownership.
Unless the plans include some sort of special events building or development that is pushing the envelope of what would be allowed under the conservation agreement then whatever the history of the conservation agreement seems largely irrelevant to the special events permit.
JLM 2 years, 3 months ago
What a bunch of nonsense.
When a conservation easement is created, it places a set of restrictions on the property which restrict the use of the property in perpetuity.
The property owner who grants the conservation gets PAID for encumbering the land with those restrictions and subsequently pays taxes on the arguably reduced value of the property post-easement.
Stop the big alligator tears for the nobility of the grantor of the conservation easement. It was a simple property transaction and they got paid for it.
The property owner then sold the property --- at a pretty strong instant in time for the local market, one might observe --- to a willing buyer subject to that conservation easement.
Everybody knew what they were buying and selling and the title report contained the easement reference and that encumbrance was known to all.
Nobody twisted anybody's arm and the seller got paid handsomely a second time.
The seller does not retain any rights as to the future use of the property. That is just plain commerce, folks. All this nonsense that the seller should be consulted about the current owner's plans for the property is just silly.
The seller got paid handsomely --- twice --- to deliver the property to a new owner with s set of restrictions put in place by the seller.
So now, it is time for the seller to be quiet, count your money and move on.
The new owner is entitled to do whatever he wants with the property. He can even seek to remove or modify the restrictions but only if the original documents provide that authority.
Nonetheless, it is his property and he has paid full price to obtain that right.
Like any development, his plans will be scrutinized by the appropriate regulatory authority and if authorized under the regulatory scheme --- yes, including the conservation easement --- he will be allowed to do whatever he wants within the existing regulatory scheme. And why not?
The only folks who have any authority as to the implications of the conservation easement are the folks in whose favor the easement was granted. In this case, that is apparently the Yampa Valley Land Trust.
3canines 2 years, 3 months ago
This is not about a struggling ranching family trying to survive.It about a millionaire looking to impress his buddies.
If you want humanely raised beef, buy a locally raised 4-H animal. MUCH less expensive than the gentleman rancher's beef!
rod williams 2 years, 3 months ago
my name is Rod Williams.I have never commented on the Pilot before today.The first thing i noticed when I began to read the comments about Ryan Woods guest ranch proposal was how many people in this county there are with the last name {anonymous].If my last name was [anonymous]I believe i would have it legally changed to Sue, anything but {anonymous] You people are truly gutless.
What Ryan Wood has done with Sweetwood Ranch and proposes to with the guest ranch has a lot less impact on the land with regard to light pollution {give me a break],noise,traffic and wildlife migration than the sprawl of 35 acre ranchettes that have become so prevelant,
Best of luck to Mr. Wood in acquiring his SUP
exduffer 2 years, 3 months ago
When do the oil rigs show up?
HiltonGultch 2 years, 2 months ago
This is Awesome, it's just like the old tv show Dallas. Wood has a legit plan, you guys should try to be friends. Demand he holds a charity event and teaches blind fishing class or something. He lives in our town, he invests in our community, it is possible he has good intentions.
kmm 2 years, 2 months ago
I have copied a PREVIOUS POST BY CJ MUCKLOW, County Ag Extension Agent, from a discussion on Feb 16 Sweetwood Permit.
As a board member of the Colorado Cattlemen’s Agricultural Land Trust (CCALT) I wanted to clarify a few points from the editorial submitted by Ken Reed and other comments.
CCALT currently holds the conservation easement on the Sweetwood Ranch. This easement was funded in part by Great Outdoors Colorado as well as the Natural Resource Conservation Service. Routt County’s Purchase of Development Rights program did not fund any part of this easement and no County dollars were spent on the Sweetwood Ranch. The Conservation Easement was originally donated by the May family to the Yampa Valley Land Trust. YVLT subsequently approved the transfer to CCALT.
Conservation easements are voluntary contracts private landowners can use to protect the many conservation values that are associated with their lands. They are permanent restrictions and limit development and subdivision of a property. Conservation easements typically allow for and encourage traditional uses such as farming, ranching, hunting and fishing. Conservation easements are meant to protect a property while still making it economically viable. The proposed guest ranching operations on Sweetwood Ranch are in conformance with the conservation easement which encumbers the property. The original conservation easement donated by the Mays to YVLT allowed for compatible alternative uses such as bed and breakfasts and country inns. The easement was subsequently amended to improve the conservation values of the ranch by adding in 71 acres of lands and over ½ mile of Elk River frontage as well as to make some changes to the location of the building areas so they would be less impactful on the Conservation values of the Property.
The landowners of the Sweetwood Ranch worked with CCALT before submitting the permit application to make sure the proposed uses were in conformance with the conservation easement. Guest ranches and special events are one way to supplement income from agriculture as well as educate the public about western heritage and land ethics. We have seen guest operations paired very successfully with conservation easements in the past. There are other existing guest ranches in Routt County which are under conservation easement.
CCALT takes its stewardship obligations very seriously and we monitor our easement properties annually. CCALT will continue to work with the landowners of Sweetwood Ranch to be sure the commercial and recreational activities occurring on the ranch remain compatible with the conservation values of the property.
That being said, noise, traffic, light and zoning issues are above and beyond the scope of what a conservation easement entails. CCALT is only responsible for enforcing the terms written into the conservation easement. These are Planning Department issues and should be addressed in the Special Use Permit Process.
greenwash 2 years, 2 months ago
No matter what , this ranch will never ever be economically viable ....EVER. Lets get that straight.
jerry carlton 2 years, 2 months ago
Hilton gulch makes fun of blind people. Really classy.
blue_spruce 2 years, 2 months ago
"...Several neighbors have indicated that they only bought their properties after reviewing the zoning , that that they were assured that nothing like what Mr. Wood is proposing would take place and that what he is proposing is going to change zoning. Sorry to say it but they are either mistaken or were poorly advised..."
Candice Martin 2 years, 2 months ago
HiltonGultch 2 years, 2 months ago
Jerry, what gives, I was being serious about charitable events and you try to spin it like that? Weak.
martinratdog, what specific reason was your uncle's permit denied, that's not cool? I had no idea this ranch had been shot down for a permit in the past, too bad.
peevla 2 years, 2 months ago
Hi guys I know this story has now graduated to old news, but I wish to respin something for the realistic view. The CCALT. This is what I found out about them in 2 clicks.
"The Colorado Cattlemen's Agricultural Land Trust (CCALT) was created with the primary interests of the agricultural landowner in mind; a land trust of landowners, by landowners, and for landowners."
Sounds sort of self serving doesn't it?
Please write a letter to the editor, Martinratdog, as this information has been misplayed by the press. Steamboat Pilot, please print it when you see it.
I wish you luck and I hope the town gets to hear about this injustice.
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