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That financial and historical stake has given Jacob a personal tie to his land that city dwellers don’t have.
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Steve Jacob, left, and his son Jared stand on their bluff-top land near Elba, Minn., on Wednesday where the Jacobs hope to build a new home overlooking Whitewater State Park. (photo by Katie Derus/Winona Daily News) |
“You can’t see cities; you can’t see roads,” Jacob said from his ridgetop land north of Elba, Minn. “I own this home, and eventually I’d like my kids to live here too.”
Jacob has discovered his backyard view isn’t just beautiful — it’s also lucrative. Jacob rents out seven homes — perched, like his home, on blufftops — on his 305-acre spread. He also harvests timber there.
But where Jacob sees a profitable rental business, others looking up at the homes see an eyesore or a hazard. Some of Jacob’s neighbors don’t like living next to his rental homes, and Winona County planning officials say the homes illustrate why the county needs new laws limiting blufftop development.
At stake is the scenic blufftop land symbolic to many Winonans and the private property rights of blufftop owners like Jacob.
The fight seems headed to court — again.
Jacob has sought and repeatedly been denied county permits to build four more blufftop homes on another nearby property. He’s already been to court against the county, where he won. And he filed suit again last week — this time asking a judge to force the county to allow him to build the homes.
Though the first lawsuit centered on the legality of a road Jacob built, he believes the county’s opposition to the plan was rooted elsewhere — in its desire, Jacob says, to obstruct his plans to build more blufftop homes.
County planning officials, of course, see things differently. They say Jacob has rebuffed their attempts to help him legally operate his unconventional enterprise. They also say a road Jacob has built to his proposed home site that required a permit he didn’t get, that the road can’t accommodate emergency vehicles, and that the home-building proposal violates feedlot setback laws.
Some of Jacob’s neighbors feel his plan to build more blufftop homes is neither safe nor sensible, said Thomas Neumann, who chairs the Whitewater Township board.
“Rules don’t seem to make much difference to him; he pretty much goes ahead and does whatever he feels like doing,” Neumann said. “He’s kind of daring the county to enforce the rules.”
Where’s the road going?
Jacob’s yearlong legal battle with Winona County started with a dispute over dirt.
That disagreement eventually was resolved in Jacobs’ favor: A February 2008 ruling ordered Winona County officials to allow Jacob to build a road to haul timber off a parcel of blufftop land in Whitewater Township. In that ruling, Winona County Judge Jeffrey Thompson declared that county planners were “makeshift and inconsistent” in their application of zoning laws.
In early 2007, shortly after Jacob bought the Whitewater Township land, he asked the county for permission to build a road there to harvest timber. At the same time, both he and county officials say they had informal conversations about his desire to build homes on the property.
The county board denied Jacob’s application to build the road in June 2007, but that didn’t halt his plans. Soon after he was denied a permit, Jacob began building a smaller road on the property — one barely small enough to sidestep county laws that require a permit for road construction.
About the same time, Jacob formally applied to county planners to allow him to build a home on the same property. Planners responded that Jacob’s application for a dwelling permit meant the road he was building would have to meet higher standards; they then dispatched a sheriff’s deputy to order Jacob to stop building the road. The two parties started squabbling over whether the road displaced enough soil to require a permit, and Thompson later ruled that it didn’t.
During the dispute, Jacob says county planners began what became a disturbing trend of issuing him ever-changing expectations. For example, county planners initially alleged Jacob had moved 533 cubic yards of soil while building his road — barely more than the 500-cubic-yard threshold that would require him to get a permit for the road. But planners later changed their estimate and alleged Jacob had moved 1,066 cubic yards of soil, based on the premise that the dirt is counted twice — once when excavated and again when deposited.
To Jacob, such shifts show that planners aren’t following the letter of the law, but instead are searching for ways to stall a project they deem undesirable.
“They’re creating a moving document that can be interpreted several different ways at their discretion,” Jacob said.
A bigger debate
Jacob made his case public on July 17, when he read Thompson’s ruling at a hearing on proposed changes to the county zoning ordinance. It was one of several tense moments in the ongoing, often-volatile debate over the proposed bluff-development changes. And far from affecting just a few scattered property owners, the changes would restrict or ban development in roughly one-third of Winona County.
The proposed guidelines would define what constitutes a bluff and prevent development near the tops and bases of bluffs. It also would determine what types of bluffs are completely off-limits to building and which are buildable only after obtaining conditional-use permits or engineering studies.
During the recent debate, county planners say they’ve tried to balance the concerns of bluff property owners with demands from environmental activists. The latter group has, at times, said planners won’t back strict-enough measures to protect local bluffs.
American Indians have also urged the county to protect bluff development, mostly because bluffs could contain burial sites.
County Planning Director Brian Bender says the blufftop rental homes like Jacob’s are “one of the reasons why we want ordinances dealing with development” on bluffs.
Bender said the county has wrangled with Jacob because he hasn’t followed the ordinances, not because its out to stop bluff development entirely.
Bender said that Jacob violated county law by building the disputed road. He also alleges Jacob hasn’t been forthcoming with county officials in his plans for his new property. By first applying for a permit to build a logging road and later applying to build homes off that road, Bender said Jacob tried to trick county leaders into permitting a road they wouldn’t have otherwise allowed.
“I don’t think we have misled Steve in any fashion,” Bender said. “If anyone was misled, it was the county board, the county planning commission and the planning department.”
A new battle begins
Jacob insists he’s a logger first and a real-estate mogul second. But his second challenge to county planners would allow Jacob to build four more homes on a ridgetop accessed by the disputed road.
County planners say Jacob can’t build the homes because they’re within 1,000 feet of a feedlot, for which county law requires a variance. They also cite “unresolved topics” with the disputed road to the home sites.
The feedlots are located on another blufftop across a valley on a property owned by Jim Kreofsky, who declined comment Thursday when contacted by the Daily News. Jacob argues the feedlots shouldn’t affect his home-building plans, in part because Kreofsky asked to expand his feedlot within 1,000 feet of Jacob’s home sites after Jacob first proposed those sites. County planners say the timing doesn’t matter because Jacob lost his place in line after his original application to build homes was denied.
Bender added that he doesn’t believe Jacob is harvesting timber on the property, though stumps and fallen trees were visible during a visit to the property last week.
Since his hilly, forested land is ill-suited for farming, Jacob says he’s tapping his land’s few valuable resources by logging and renting out homes with views. And building blufftop homes — though considered by some to be environmentally and aesthetically undesirable — isn’t currently illegal, Jacob said.
“If they restrict building on blufftops, I’m not a citizen who’s out to create violations,” Jacob said. “Right now, the ordinance is what it is.”
Even Planning Commissioner Jeff Broberg acknowledged the county’s current zoning laws may allow Jacob to build the homes. Broberg led the planning commission’s efforts to prevent Jacob from building the road in 2007, and agreed with Bender’s statement that the Jacob rental homes illustrate the need for tighter blufftop regulation.
But “it’s certainly not fair to hold a guy up while you’re revising the ordinance,” Broberg said.
For now, both sides say they’re looking forward to having another day in court. Jacob said he’s “optimistic” about his newest motion filed Monday. Winona County courts have yet to set a date for the proceedings.
Assistant County Attorney Tom Gort declined to discuss his approach to defending Winona County against Jacob’s claims, instead saying: “The appropriate forum (to discuss the county’s defense) is in court. And that’s where we’re heading.”
Contact Mark Sommerhauser at (507) 453-3514 or msommerhauser@winonadailynews.com
