Yachats chief says firefighters will not not respond to incidents inside Yachats Brewing, re-igniting 7-year-old building permit controversy

 

By QUINTON SMITH/YachatsNews.com

The Yachats Rural Fire Protection District has announced it will not respond to fires or medical calls inside Yachats Brewing because it lacks building permits and a certificate of occupancy, re-igniting a dispute over a popular brewery and restaurant operating without permits for seven years.

Fire district administrator Frankie Petrick sent a letter to the city of Yachats on June 2, informing it of her decision.

“I understand this has been an issue for the City for quite some time … but I cannot allow entry for fire suppression without a Certificate of Occupancy,” Petrick said in her letter. “Firefighters are at risk on every fire whenever entry is required and to increase the risk by a business owner’s blatant disregard for building code requirements is unacceptable.”

But she did not send the letter to anyone else involved in the long-running permit issue – the building’s owner or the Lincoln County Planning Department – catching those parties by surprise.

The surprise was compounded by the fact that it landed on the desk of interim Yachats city manager Lee Elliott on his last full day of work. Petrick’s letter was not discovered until more than a week later when new interim manager Katherine Guenther was going through Elliott’s files. Guenther brought it to the City Council’s attention at the end of a four-hour meeting June 16.

“Nobody’s building is worth a firefighter’s life or anyone’s,” Petrick told YachatsNews.

Petrick said firefighter/paramedics would respond to incidents outside of the two buildings if there were no fires involved.

Issues date back to 2014

The Yachats Brewing property is owned by a limited liability corporation belonging to Dan Wieden of Portland, a founding partner in the world renown ad agency Wieden + Kennedy. Wieden, who bought the property in 2011, is the stepfather of brewery operator Nathan Bernard of Yachats.

With Wieden’s backing, Bernard started remodeling a former bank building in 2012 and then digging into a rock cliff behind it and erecting a two-story brewery building. When Bernard struggled to get building permits from Lincoln County in 2013, he kept working and opened the operation on July 4, 2014.

The county’s planning department, Bernard and the city have been wrestling with the issue since 2015.

Because there were no approved permits, the county building official in 2015 put a stop work order or “red tag” on the building. Bernard took it down, left some areas open for inspections and continued work on the buildings as he offered food and beer.

In 2017, the Yachats city attorney sent two letters to Bernard saying he risked having the property posted by the sheriff’s office as unsafe to occupy because he did not have building permits. But it was never enforced.

It was only in mid-2017 when Lincoln County began sending notices to Wieden in Portland that Bernard got an architect involved. When the issue continued to drag out, the attorney for Wieden’s limited liability company – El El See LLC – got involved two years later.

“We have tried to remedy this,” that attorney, Joshua Husbands of Portland told YachatsNews. “We acknowledge problems and we want to fix the problems.”

Husbands said the owner is willing to close the building to get work done, including the installation of a sprinkler system.

Fire marshal investigation

Petrick’s prohibiting Yachats firefighters from going into the building after seven years of operation was apparently emboldened by a fire marshal who began investigating an anonymous complaint about improper kitchen ventilation and propane tanks being used inside the structure in late 2019.

During her investigation, Deputy State Fire Marshal Shannon Miller became aware of the brewery’s lack of permits and set up a meeting of all the jurisdictions Nov. 27, 2019 to get up to speed on the complicated and convoluted situation.

After that meeting, Miller wrote a long memo and email summarizing the issue. While the fire marshal’s office did not have authority to close the business until it got the necessary permits, Miller wrote that she “highly recommends that no occupancy or further business” be allowed until permits were issued and the building brought up to code.

That changed a month later when Miller informed the city, the county and the Yachats fire department that a change in Oregon codes had put businesses without certificates of occupancy or permits under the enforcement of the fire marshal’s office, not the state Building Codes Division.

During that same time, the city of Yachats had initiated meetings with Wieden’s attorney, the architect and the county building department to try to resolve problems in getting plans submitted, permits approved and problems fixed.

In 2020, Miller asked for more information on the progress of the permits, including the business license from the city and the certificate of occupancy, which has to be issued by the county. On Dec. 15, 2020 – nearly a year after the initial meeting – Miller asked for another meeting to see how the fire marshal’s office could help get the process moving.

Miller’s meetings were an attempt to “get all the decision-makers into one room” and resolve the problems, Alison Green, spokeswoman for the state Fire Marshal’s Office, told YachatsNews.

Green said Yachats Fire did not consult with the fire marshal’s office before sending the letter.

“That decision was a local one,” Green said. “That fire chief has that local decision …”

Finger pointing

The Lincoln County Planning Department outsources requests for commercial permits and building, electrical, plumbing and structural plans to a company in Eugene with more expertise in engineering and commercial code requirements. Northwest Code Professionals has repeatedly sent Yachats Brewings’ plans back to the county with questions and requests for more details.

The county is then supposed to relay those issues to the architect and now, the attorney. But there are lags in communication and often disagreements over what should be done.

County Building Official Al Eames and planning department director Onno Husing say Yachats Brewing’s representatives sometimes try to negotiate doing certain things that Oregon buildings codes say must be done or repeatedly send in plans that don’t meet codes.

“We need to look at the entire building as a complete package … and not piecemeal it,” said Eames. “They keep on submitting stuff and it doesn’t get accepted.”

The two buildings are supposed to have a fire sprinkler system but do not yet. Yachats Brewing has submitted plans for those, but there is even a disagreement over whether the sprinkler permit has been approved.

Eames says the sprinkler system permit has been approved – the company’s attorney disputes that – but the company’s architect and engineer have not submitted plans to show the structure can handle the weight of the pipes and water.

Eames or Husing say the issue with Yachats Brewing is unlike anything they’ve seen in their 40 years in the business.

The issue reached into county commission offices during the winter and a county attorney was assigned to help the planning department find a resolution. That resulted in an April 16 letter to Husing and Eames, Miller, Husband and the city of Yachats – but not Yachats Fire.

The county’s letter listed five areas that needed to be addressed, including an engineer’s report that all uninspected work meet design criteria, reviews of electrical, plumbing and mechanical plans, responses to seven items that the commercial plan examiner found, the need for two electrical services and unauthorized use of a wind turbine from an adjacent property, and an issue with floor loads.

But Husband, the attorney for Wieden’s company, is just as critical of the county’s work on the plans and permits. He says communication often takes months, even after regular “all hands” meetings between the city, county and architect.

Their architect has repeatedly submitted plans then doesn’t hear anything for months, he said.

After the latest plan submission in May, Husbands told YachatsNews, the owner was “hoping for a green light to begin working to fix these issues.”

“The property owner has been ready, willing and able to get this property remediated and up to code,” he said.

But Husbands was also upset that the letter from the Yachats fire chief went only to the city and no one else.

“Since the beginning of this process we have received limited, incomplete, somewhat haphazard and in many instances no comments in response to our applications and submissions of information in response to requests from the county,” Husbands said in a June 21 email to the county after seeing a copy of the Yachats Fire letter. “This most recent issue with the fire marshal, coming out of the blue, has pushed this process into the zone of being unacceptable.”

What’s next?

It is not clear what the next steps might be, if any.

According to a January email, Miller, the deputy state fire marshal, wants there to be no business operations at Yachats Brewing until it gets a temporary certificate of occupancy from the county.

Husbands, the company attorney, has told the county that their architect is working on the issues outlined in the county’s April 16 letter.

Husing, the county’s planning department director, says while issuing permits and a certificate of occupancy is up to the county, enforcing any violations is up to the city of Yachats.

Although it issues yearly business licenses and routinely signed off on Oregon Liquor Control Commission licenses, the city of Yachats has declined stronger enforcement efforts and focused on getting the parties together to fix the building’s issues.

Guenther, Yachats’ interim city manager who is also the city planner, and Mayor Leslie Vaaler had no comment about what plans the city might have. Guenther is also the chair of the Yachats Rural Fire Protection District board.

Petrick’s view is more direct.

“It’s been going on too long,” she said. “It’s the city’s responsibility to enforce. It’s their job.”

 

To read the first story by YachatsNews on Yachats Brewing permit issues from January 2019 go here.

To read a later update on the permit issue go here.