Editor,
Island neighborhoods could suffer serious impacts from a proposed creation of an Island County code for wineries. While part of code language needs clarification, Comfort’s winery on South Whidbey is driving this effort because they don’t meet requirements for rural event centers. It’s important to them because they built a 9,000-square-foot building despite being told previously by county officials that the building and their property doesn’t adhere to existing rules for event centers.
Although the winery operation and tasting room are allowed on the property, the event center is not. Carl Comfort testified to the Island County Hearing Examiner last year that he planned to write a new code during the eight-month construction of the large building. Then he hired Larry Kwarsick, former Island County planning director and Langley mayor, to write a new code to fit the expansion.
Comfort’s new building houses wine equipment, barrels, bed and breakfast, farmworker rooms, tasting room, and commercial kitchen. The problem: it also includes a 2,000-square-foot event space and 1,900 square feet of outdoor decks for parties.
Why should wineries have less oversight and be allowed to hold more events with outdoor amplified music than an event center, already defined in county code?
On South Whidbey, most wineries are small boutique operations in bucolic settings. Many of them already fit the current code for event centers because it has commonsense requirements: safe road access, locations away from dense rural neighborhoods, occasional small events without booming music. Neighbors like these wineries and want them to thrive and succeed financially.
A new code will not only provide a definition for wineries, it will study and regulate events and the new business of agritourism in Island County. Comfort’s code was submitted to the county planning commission and board of commissioners in March. Commissioner Helen Price Johnson encouraged her fellow commissioners to “run it through for a quick fix… we have a draft already… .” The planning department and Commissioners Jill Johnson and Richard Hannold declined, citing long-standing requests for other code changes, the importance of public input, and a broader conversation during the 2016 Comprehensive Plan process. Even a “quick fix” of the current code affects broader land use issues.
Neighborhoods on both sides of Comfort’s winery experienced loud music, large crowds of 180 wedding guests, and traffic on every 2013 summer weekend. People move to Whidbey Island for its rural character, one factor that virtually all residents agree is essential to their quality of life here. Likewise, tourists visit because farms and wineries are an important part of rural character if they contribute, rather than detract, from rural neighborhoods where people live — and stay — long after tourists get in the ferry line to depart.
MARY WALSH
Langley
Neighborhoods Interested in Commonsense Economics
