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Brook Le Van of Sustainable Settings doesn’t sit still real well.

He believes a food crisis is coming with the end of the oil-based economy.

And he’s got work to do on the farm.

But late in the day on Feb. 12 the big bearded man was sitting at a small table in an airless room in front of the Pitkin County commissioners.

He listened. Sighed. Put his head in his hand. Smoldered.

Le Van is co-founder and director of Sustainable Settings, a nonprofit dedicated to creating a model farm that provides farmers with healthy profits, ensures food security and restores local ecosystems.

He had spent the last five years nurturing that dream, showing people how to grow their own food and trying to build “a “world-class research and educational center on the former Thompson Creek Ranch near Carbondale.”

But here he was, being taken to task for failing to build proper toilets and sinks for school children.

The commissioners told him that until he had a legal and adequate water system in place, there would be no more school field trips, lectures, tours, demonstrations, retreats or fundraisers at Sustainable Settings. 

People would have to stop coming up Highway 133 to the increasingly popular old ranch under Mount Sopris with its historic cabins and little store selling fresh eggs and farm-raised meat, and its chicken coop, livestock pen, garden, solar panels and 200-plus acres of pasture and sage hillsides.

Then County Commissioner Michael Owsley said he had concerns about the number of school buses coming and going from the site.

That got Le Van’s goat.

He remembered the commissioners had once supported school buses so children could learn a better way to do things.

“OK,” Le Van said quietly, after hearing about the school buses. “We’ll add it to the list.”
 
The meeting ended.

Le Van stood up.

He walked out.

And he immediately went to find a real-estate broker who could tell him how much the ranch was worth.

The answer was $12 million, which is $10 million more than Sustainable Settings paid for the land five years ago.

Le Van was ready to sell this particular dream of a model farm and move Sustainable Settings someplace where it was easier to get things done.

Pitkin County’s web of regulatory requirements were in his way, both too expensive and time consuming, he said.

The world was changing, not for the better, and there was a fresh urgency to get “the work” done.

He called an emergency meeting of the organization’s board of directors.

After a long, grueling meeting, they unanimously agreed to list the ranch for sale, directed Le Van to find another piece of land and drafted a press release.

“The Board unanimously agreed that the ranch is a special place, but the expense for a growing, land-based nonprofit organization to keep pace with the ongoing list of Pitkin County regulations, coupled with the financial security that a sale of the ranch could give the organization, made it necessary to look for a site in a less regulated county,” the release said.

Garfield County, well-known for its lax land use regulations in comparison to Pitkin County, was just two miles down Highway 133 from the ranch.

The layers

Le Van had been well aware of the regulatory requirements that were both behind and ahead of Sustainable Settings.

After the organization bought the ranch from The Conservation Fund and Pitkin County in 2003 with a $2.1 million donation from two wealthy board members from Aspen, it asked the county to rezone the property. A new “public facilities” master plan was approved.

Of Sustainable Setting’s 245 acres, 220 had been set aside as either open space or agricultural land from a conservation easement already on the land.

On the remaining 25 acres, the organization had to maintain four historic ranch buildings and could build up to 48,000 square feet of new residential, agricultural and commercial space.

Le Van and the board of Sustainable Settings had the green light for a “nonprofit research and educational facility” to “pioneer and demonstrate methods of sustainable agriculture, ecosystem restoration, green building and the integration of these disciplines.”

If.

If they complied with the conditions in the resolution of approval for the new master plan.

If they complied with the conservation easement and the historic designation for the ranch.

If they applied for a building permit and submitted a drainage and erosion control plan.

If they conducted a road inventory, got a driveway permit from the state and submitted a fugitive dust control plan.

And if they proved they had “an adequate quality and quantity of water” and a state approved sewage disposal system.

The county, recognizing those hurdles, did give Sustainable Settings a list of projects that were exempt from the main layer of requirements.

Right away, Sustainable Settings could renovate the historic ranch house and build a solar vault privy toilet, chicken coops, a garden shed, and a barn.


In the first week of May, Le Van was asked which of those projects were completed.

“Chicken coop,” Le Van said, shaking his head, gesturing toward the fenced-in chickens. “Five years.”

He said the county’s regulations were in the way, even though many projects had been exempt from the most onerous of the county regulations.

“Our work is urgent and we’ve got to get to work,” Le Van insisted. “We can’t work here and we can in almost every other place.”

Suzanne Wolff, a senior land use planner with Pitkin County, handled the review of Sustainable Setting’s master plan.

“We definitely do not feel that the county regulations are too onerous to achieve the goals,” Wolff said. “We feel the planning and building regulations are necessary to ensure health/safety and to ensure compatibility with the county’s land use goals and policies.”

Plastic buckets and sawdust

The meeting in February that frustrated Le Van was preceded by one in December, which also didn’t go so well.

He’d been cited for not submitting the required annual reports documenting the use at Sustainable Settings.

So Le Van brought three years worth of data in.

The county wanted four years of reports. And the reports he did bring failed to include information about traffic, campers and retail sales.

More importantly, the reports for 2005, 2006 and 2007 showed that visits to the ranch had gone up from 3,700 to 8,000 a year.

Last June, for example, 32 people came to “community potluck bonfires,” 285 people came for two-week long workshops or short courses, 145 volunteers came to work in the garden, and nearly 200 people came on tours.

On any given day, 300 people could be on the ranch.

The commissioners looked at the numbers.

They read a report from Nancy MacKenzie, a county environmental health specialist. It said “there are no adequate legal, permanent bathroom facilities for the current ongoing activities that have been occurring at the farm.”

Sustainable Settings was popular.

But it was out of compliance.

“In December, they shut us down to the public,” Le Van said.  

Then came the February meeting.

Le Van explained to the commissioners the steps he was taking to come into compliance.

It wasn’t enough.

“Progress is being made to resolve the outstanding issues of adequate bathroom and handwashing facilities for the public,” wrote  MacKenzie in a Feb. 5 memo. “However, at this time no public activities should be allowed. A legal, adequate water supply must be established. Only at that time will onsite wastewater treatment system permits and building permits be issued.”

The commissioners, four of whom had reviewed the 2003 master plan and supported the organization’s mission, didn’t relish having turned away the public in December, but now they said it was still necessary given the heavy use of the ranch and lack of approved sanitation facilities.

“There was concern,” said Pitkin County Commissioner Michael Owsley. “School children who have petted the barnyard animals need to have a place to wash their hands. And there were some sketchy outhouse arrangements where people were shitting in plastic buckets and sawdust.

“To some degree, he was a victim of his own success because he had so many people visit the place,” Owsley said. “To this day, there is no certified sanitation system. And while I can understand how it becomes a burden in terms of money and time, if they were sincere, they would do it. After all, the disposal of sewage is the basis of sustainability.”

There have also been a series of other compliance issues at Sustainable Settings since 2003, many of them prompted by the complaints of Ray Pojman, a consistent critic of the organization who lives up the Crystal River Valley from the property:
— The organization failed to apply for and obtain permits for numerous special events.
— A composting toilet was installed without permits.
— A yurt was not permitted, nor was a travel-trailer that was being used for housing.
— They were selling farm products without the required state license.
— A new access of off Highway 133 was created without a permit.
— Ten truckloads of dirt were dumped on the property without an earth moving permit.

Many of these problems, once they were brought to Le Van’s attention, were rectified, or at least steps were taken toward compliance.

For example, Le Van recently submitted an earth moving application to the county for the mounds of dirt that are piled up in two neat rows near the highway and Thompson Creek.

“Ranching is the art of piling,” Le Van said.

But an earth moving permit requires a revegetation plan.

And Le Van doesn’t want to grow things on his plies of dirt, he wants to move the dirt around the ranch as needed.

“And we paid 500 bucks to the county for dirt,” Le Van said about the earth moving permit application.

Asked if the organization couldn’t get into compliance on the water and sanitation issues, stay where they are, open back up to the public, and then chip away at the other regulations, Le Van scowled.

“Hey, I want to build a barn,” he said. “The county requires a sprinkler system. For a barn. See, it is just endless. I just didn’t see that it would ever end.”

When challenged that he had adopted a defeatist attitude toward Pitkin County, Le Van’s passion rose to the surface.

“Come over here. You want take to a picture of me standing next to our sign that’s been on a sawhorse for five years because I won’t pay $700 for permission to put a fucking sign up?” he said while standing in the driveway at Sustainable Settings. “That’s bullshit. That’s attitudinal.”

A unanimous vote

Le Van spent two hours talking with his board members in February about why they needed to move out of Pitkin County.

And the board has a real stake in the deal.

Board member Peter Lewis, along with his son Adam, is on the Sustainable Settings board. In 2003, the Lewis family gave the organization a $2.1 million grant to buy the Thompson Ranch. Peter Lewis is a philanthropist who has given $50 million to the Guggenheim Museum and $24 million to Case Western Reserve University.

Also on the board is Rose Le Van, Brook’s wife and co-founder of Sustainable Settings, Peter Hawkins of Basalt, Ross Jacobs of Snowmass Village, Cavanaugh O’Leary of Aspen, and Mike Stranahan of Aspen, who is an heir to the Champion sparkplug fortune. Ben Walton, a member of Walton family that founded Wal-Mart, is a board member emeritus.

Le Van gave the board a detailed review of the regulatory hurdles facing the ranch.

“I presented the stuff and I made them sit through the minutiae,” Le Van said. “And we started with the layers we had agreed to in the master plan. All the requirements, all the reporting, all the stuff. I made them read everything.

“And then I said, ‘OK, now here’s the next layer,” he said. “’And here’s the next layer.’ By the time I got done, they were like, ‘Oh my God.’”

Le Van said it was a tough discussion. One board member asked if Le Van should be fired.

“A couple of them cut their heart out and threw it on the table,” Le Van said. “They love this place. We all do. But when it got down to realities and financing a business ... .”

Board member Michael Stranahan said he listened carefully to what both Brook and Rose Le Van told the board about “the hassles.”

“My thinking was, well, you know, they are doing it, and they have to figure out where they want to put their effort,” Stranahan said. “And if they would rather put their effort into programs rather than jumping through regulatory hoops, OK, fine,” he said.

But it was still painful.

“The thought of Sustainable Settings leaving the valley hurts me because I know how much good work they have done and I want to see that remain,” Stranahan said. “I’m a former schoolteacher and I really think it is really wonderful for kids to go watch and see a sheep being sheared.”

Meanwhile, the Pitkin County commissioners feel it is perfectly reasonable to ask Sustainable Settings to comply with state regulations, the land use code, and the master plan for the ranch.

They didn’t appreciate being blamed for the ranch not achieving its goals.

And at least one set of elected eyebrows went way up at the asking price.

“My biggest objection is that they are talking about ‘sustainable settings,’” said Commissioner Owsley. “And yet they are selling the place for six times what they paid for it? Give me a break.

“The least sustainable activity is real-estate speculation and it is the cause of much misery for many people here, so if you are talking about sustainability, it would be to make a decent return on investment on $2 million and turn it over to another public institution and not engage in the type of real estate speculation that is so harmful to this valley,” Owsley said.

When offered that criticism, Le Van said his board directed him to find out what the ranch would sell for.

He’s done that.

“What should we do, give it away?” Le Van asked.
The land deal

Ray Pojman is busy asking questions about the potential sale of Sustainable Settings, questions that suggest the county is being taken advantage of.

The 245-acre ranch that Sustainable Settings is on was once part of a 440-acre parcel of land bought by The Conservation Fund, a national organization.

The fund paid $5.1 million in 2000 for the land and the deal was financed in part by Pitkin County. In 2003, a conservation easement on the 245 acres was conveyed to the county and The Conservation Fund sold the land, along with the easement, to Sustainable Settings for $2 million.

If the property is sold, the conservation easement, and its restrictions, will “run with the land.”

“In our partnership with the Conservation Fund, we elected to find a conservation buyer for that 245 acres and it was listed with (ranch broker) Mike Gerbaz,” said Dale Will, the director of the Pitkin County Open Space and Trails Board. “We put it on the market for $2 million and the first person who walked in and wanted to buy for that price, would get it.”

Will also points out the appraisal for the land was $2 million, and that was without the conservation easement.

The buyer turned out to be Sustainable Settings.

Now there is nothing preventing Sustainable Settings from selling the property for whatever the market will bear.

Dale Will said “unequivocally” that the county is not being taken advantage of, nor did Sustainable Settings get any sort of sweetheart deal.


“Not only do we think Sustainable Settings got no extra benefit from us, they paid for the conservation easement and we feel we achieved our conservation goals without spending any money,” Will said.

The end game

On March 18, Le Van e-mailed Suzanne Wolff, a senior planner with Pitkin County, and told her: “A new owner of the ranch might more likely than not be an individual.

“If so, what will it take to change the ranch’s zoning from its current PUB back to R-35 or Residential Ranch (or whatever the category would be so they can get permits to build a home and horse barn, etc.), he wrote. “Can you detail time, process, and costs, please?”

It was an ironic question, given that the reason Le Van wanted to move the organization was because of the county’s complex regulation, and now he may need to go through more regulatory steps in order to sell the place.

Under the conservation easement, the land was divided into an “agricultural” area, an “open” area, and a 26-acre “building” area.

Inside the building area, Sustainable Settings, or a new owner, can build 5,570 square feet of new residential space, including two houses and several cabins, as long as any one building isn’t over 2,200 square feet.

They can build 25,000 square feet of agricultural buildings, including a barn, greenhouses, and a milkhouse, as well as a ranch office and an artist’s studio. None of the buildings can be more than 5,000 square feet, except for the barn, which can be 6,500 square feet.

And they can build 13,000 square feet of retail space to sell farm goods.

Or a new owner could build a luxury ranch house with a horse barn, but they would probably want a bigger house than 2,200 square feet if they do.

“Rezoning requires review and recommendation by the Planning Commission and then two readings by the Board of County Commissioners,” Wolff replied to Le Van. “In addition, in rezoning the property back to RS-30, you are also vacating the prior approval by the BOCC for Sustainable Settings, so someone who wants to construct a single family residence on the property would have to obtain a new approval. ... I would assume a purchaser would want the property to be rezoned and an Activity Envelope to be approved, prior to closing.”

Wolff noted it would take “four months or so” and at least $3,500 in fees.

Wolff’s response is a glimpse into the complex world of the Pitkin County land use code, which is precisely what Le Van says is keeping him from the doing work he feels is urgent.

“It just takes so long to do anything,” Le Van said. “Their process has gotten so crazy.”

There are more than a few landowners in Pitkin County that would agree with Le Van about the cost and complexity of the county’s process.

On the other hand, most Pitkin County homeowners also understand that firm and tight land use regulations are quite good for their property values.

While Le Van may be frustrated, he did praise Wolff and Nancy MacKenzie in the environmental health department and he said he realizes they are just doing their jobs.

“We don’t feel like we are getting screwed,” he said. “We just can’t do our job in a timely fashion. And it costs a lot of money to do and it doesn’t in a lot of other places. I’m sorry that it is not that sexy. But we own it and we can sell it and we didn’t take taxpayers money.”

Le Van, when asked, said he isn’t in a position to personally profit, at all, from the sale of the property.

“I get paid $36,000 a year,” he said. And he has no financial interest in the land. Period.

The Sustainable Settings board met again last week.

Le Van told them about the first list of potential places to move the organization to. Some locations are in the valley, some are not. Le Van has just returned from a tour of potential sites in Oregon.

“I’m being told to look anywhere and to bring to the board selected sites,” Le Van said.

After the board meeting, about 50 local real estate brokers came and looked at the Sustainable Settings property.

“Are we thrilled we’re leaving?” Le Van said. “No. Are we leaving the valley? We don’t know. But do we have to leave this county? I’m afraid so.”
bgs@aspendailynews.com