After neighbors have clearly opposed Weber Hall – a proposed wedding and small events venue in Mancos – the business will still push at a future Montezuma County Board of Commissioners meeting to get the business up and running.
On the hall’s Instagram page, owners Jeremy and Silvinia Moore stated their page documents their journey “renovating an unfinished barn into a community gathering space and event venue.”
The last post they published was on May 25, where they explained they needed the community’s support “admist a handful of opposing neighbors who have ignored our willingness to compromise.”
One of these neighbors is Mike Nolan, a farmer who runs Mountain Roots Produce a few thousand feet down the road from Weber Hall and has been in the area for 10 years. He’s president of the Mancos Conservation District and a board member of the Four Corners Farmers and Ranchers Coalition.
“I’m addicted to volunteering,” 42-year-old Nolan said.
He said his other neighbors oppose Weber Hall because it’s a residential and agricultural neighborhood and they’re concerned about increased traffic on Road G. Also, the venue’s driveway location is a blind turn where drivers need to make a full stop before turning on the road.
“When you really look at it down to the nitty-gritty, it’s like micro-weddings are 60 people, plus the trash, plus the porta-potties, plus the catering, plus the alcohol, plus the musicians, plus the officiant and the flowers, plus the setup and breakdown,” Nolan said. “You’re talking dozens and dozens and dozens of shops to actually get this thing actually working. That’s a lot of extra traffic in the end, and that’s a lot of people who are not familiar with those roads driving down there.”
He also said that the neighbors have stated that they don’t want to listen to the inevitable wedding noise. Nolan agrees with that.
The main thing is that they don’t see how Weber Hall is fit for a small property – 3.71 acres – like it is.
He said that part of the Mancos Valley is still pretty quiet and noise carries out there quite a bit. He and his partner, Mindy, can hear the neighbors talking, even though the houses are spaced out, and cars that are driven down Roads N and G.
“We can hear neighbors talking,” Nolan said. “You can hear the cars going down the roads on a regular basis. So the idea of having potentially two weddings a weekend for five to six months a year would be pretty life changing for people like us.”
And with a wedding and events venue, they feel that traffic in the evenings is a large ask.
“We don’t have kids, but some of the neighbors have three kids under the age of 10,” Nolan said. “Also, older couples have been around here for 30 to 40 years.”
Many neighbors feel so strongly that they wrote a 58-page document (titled Objection to HIP-06-2022) highlighting why and how Weber Hall will affect the neighborhood in a negative way.
They even included emails between the owners and Montezuma County’s Planning and Zoning Director Don Haley, along with a couple when Haley criticized the hall’s owners about two dinner events they put on without a permit earlier this year.
Nolan said Haley basically wrote a cease-and-desist letter about their events (that the owners advertised on their Instagram page) while the applicants said they did everything right.
With Weber Hall’s third round to obtain a permit by resubmitting their application, they’re now trying to get approval to run the commercial operation using a high-impact permit and a special use permit and zoned as agricultural and residential.
According to the land use code, high-impact permits are used for commercial or industrial development for cases that “change the basic character or the use of the environment in which the construction, activity or operations occur.”
Special use permits are put in place to “allow flexibility” for temporary or interim special uses, such as events – outdoor music concerts and motorcycle rallies.
Initially, the Moores tried to rezone their property from agriculture into a commercial zone and spot zoning, but it failed. This has been in process for more than a year.
After their denial, the Moores reapplied for the HIP/SUP.
The owners posted a call for support on Instagram on May 25, which resulted in 78 comments. Some vehemently opposed the proposal; others excitedly accepted it.
The Moores also invited people to check out the “frequently asked questions” on their website, which gives a lot of detail about their journey with planning and zoning and trying to find community support.
Their website also gave some history about Weber Hall. They chose to keep the name, originally spelled Webber Hall, and explained that it was a “Mormon community hall that existed just 200 feet from our property back in the early 1900s. It was celebrated as the recreational and cultural center for the area, and we hope to honor this piece of history.”
The website and Instagram page also claims that the hall will host only micro-weddings of a maximum of 60 guests on Fridays and Saturdays from May to October. On off-days, they will host up to two community events per month.
The latest planning and zoning vote occurred this past summer where it was unanimous and that the 3-2 vote will move the application to the Montezuma County Board of County Commissioners.
Even though the application will move to BOCC, the split decision still gives the opponents a little hope.
On the other hand, Nolan said the whole process has been interesting because it does not fit with the county land use code.
“I’ve read the land use code from front to back multiple times, and this does not fit it. I don’t know how they’re even considering it and how it’s passing through,” Nolan said. “This is basically a commercial business using high-impact special use under the guise of high-impact permits and special use permits. It’s just wild that they would think that this would be potentially a good idea.”
As of Sept. 13, 430 people signed the petition against Weber Hall.
The meeting was supposed to be on Halloween, but the public hearing has been pushed back to an unknown date because one of the commissioners was absent at that BOCC meeting.
Although the Weber Hall proposal wasn’t listed on the BOCC agenda that day, a Mancos resident, Max Ash, attempted to make a public comment at the meeting, uninformed about the change on the agenda. As he spoke, Montezuma County Attorney Ian MacLaren interrupted him and said the public hearing was not then.
“At this point, these guys are sort of similar to a judge,” MacLaren said. “They can’t hear about a case before the case happens.”
This article was reposted Nov. 12 to clarify that Jeremy and Silvinia Moore resubmitted their application for a permit, rather that submit a new application.
