Five-year-old permit fight may be nearing end

By QUINTON SMITH/YachatsNews.com

A contentious but behind-the-scenes dispute between Lincoln County, the city of Yachats and one of the community’s best-known businesses may be nearing a resolution after five years.

Yachats Brewing and Farm Store is a favorite with tourists and many locals for its beer and ciders, organic and fermented food and relaxed brewpub atmosphere.

But since 2013 much of the two-structure complex has been remodeled or built without a county-issued building permit, resulting in stop work orders from the county and threats of closure by the city.

The problem was exacerbated by conflicts between brewery owner Nathan Bernard and county officials and poor communication from an architect Bernard hired last March to address the issues.

Although the Yachats Planning Commission had been talking about the issue of unpermitted buildings throughout the summer, it only came into wider public view when Bernard addressed the commission and City Council in late December. In his comments to the commission and in an interview with YachatsNews.com, Bernard expressed frustration with the county and the permit process for commercial buildings but accepted responsibility for the unpermitted work on the brewery and his behavior.

Facing financial pressure and the desire to get the Farm Store up and operating in 2014, Bernard said he got “frustrated with the process” after his initial building plans were deemed insufficient in May 2013.

After that initial rejection Bernard said he asked county Building Official Al Eames if he could proceed with construction and get permits later.

“He told me “You do that at your own risk,’ ” Bernard said. “So I took the risk — knowing the repercussions. It was not the right way to handle it.

“I found the process of getting a commercial permit to be a serious obstruction for me to move forward in a timely manner,” he told the Planning Commission Dec. 18. “I moved forward at my own risk. I found a hurdle in my path … and I chose to go around that hurdle.”

In retrospect, Bernard said in a later interview, he should have slowed or stopped construction in 2013-14, reworked his financial agreements and gotten the required engineering and architectural plans.

“I was under an incredible amount of pressure trying to get everything launched,” he said of the Farm Store’s opening on July 4, 2014.

Bernard contends the brewery is “not an unsafe building that doesn’t meet code. It’s beyond code built.”

But county and city officials have been fighting to verify that, repeatedly asking for certified engineering and architect’s plans that show construction techniques and materials and details for plumbing, electrical and mechanical systems. Commercial plan inspectors rejected documents submitted in 2012, 2015 and 2017 because they deemed them inadequate or lacking myriad specifics.

In October 2017 the city of Yachats’ attorney sent Bernard a second letter threatening to post the building as unsafe for occupancy. It took five months, until March 2018, until Bernard’s attorney let the city and county know an architect had been hired to oversee getting all drawings, engineer’s reports and permits.

But it took another eight months, until Dec. 10, before architect Brian Cobb of Donald, Ore. wrote to the city and county saying he planned to submit drawings and documents for a permit the week of Jan. 14, 2019. Other than an exchange of voicemails with city planner Larry Lewis, it was the first communication from Cobb since a May 15, 2018 meeting with city and county building officials. Cobb indicated that it was a struggle to find and schedule an engineer.

After that May meeting, Bernard said he assumed Cobb was keeping everyone abreast of progress.

“I was called into city offices and told they’re ready to shut me down,” Bernard said. “That was totally news to me. I assumed there was communication going on.”

While cautious, Eames said he hopes the issue is coming to a close.

“We’ve heard these promises before,” he said. “We’ll see … hopefully we’re moving in the right direction.”

Permit trouble from the start

Bernard, 42, had a residential construction company when he and his wife, Cicely, built their house up the Yachats River in 2005. Forced by the 2008-10 recession to work farther and farther away, Bernard started looking for an opportunity closer to home.

They developed plans for an eclectic store serving beer and food but also selling organic meats and vegetables and garden supplies. With help from his stepfather, they bought a vacant bank building in 2012 and began remodeling it as the home for Yachats Farm Store. As Bernard remodeled that building – he didn’t need a permitted plan to do that — he also began carving 17 feet into a rock cliff behind and constructing the two-story building for Yachats Brewing.

And that’s when he ran into trouble with Lincoln County.

The county requires plans and permits for new construction. Bernard submitted plans in May 2013 but those were quickly labeled inadequate by commercial building inspectors who said 10 items needed resolution.

Eames said Bernard objected to the plan review process and kept going.

“I found it extremely difficult to work with the county,” Bernard said at the Dec. 18 Planning Commission meeting.

In turn, Eames said he’s never encountered anything like the Yachats Brewery situation in his 38 years of handling building permits.

Eames said the county did inspect some electrical and plumbing work in both structures by licensed contractors, but there was not a comprehensive permit for the brewery. In March 2015 the county issued a stop work order, asking that Bernard apply for a building permit, get a report from a structural engineer certifying that all work since 2013 met or exceeded code, and that he not cover any uninspected plumbing, electrical and mechanical systems.

“We don’t know what’s there,” Eames said. “We just don’t know.”

But Bernard continued working on the brewery building and it took another year – April 2016 — for the county to send a second letter asking that he adhere to the stop work order.

The city of Yachats contracts with Lincoln County to handle plan inspection and permits. But the contract leaves enforcement up to the city.

Ron Brean, who was Yachats mayor from 2008 to 2016, said at least twice he went to Bernard — at the urging of city planner Lewis – to get him to work out issues over the permit.

“It’s not uncommon for a mayor in a small town to go visit a business that’s having trouble in some way and ask them to comply,” said Brean, who moved to Medford in 2018. “Usually it works.”

While Brean said the Farm Store and Yachats Brewing are good businesses for Yachats, he was critical of Bernard for proceeding without permits.

“I think he does what he wants until he feels the pressure,” Brean said.

Gerald Stanley, who was mayor when the city attorney sent the threatening letters and left office this week, declined to discuss the issue. Joan Davies, who was city administrator under Stanley when the letters went out, said Lewis would occasionally seek her advice about the issue but never asked her to intervene.

Lewis, who retired Dec. 31 from his contract planning position, said he had never experienced outright defiance of building permit issues in his 17 years of work with the city. While Lewis said no one at the city ever told him to go easy on Bernard or Yachats Brewing, he expressed frustration that the issue dragged out so long.

After years of talk and threats the city attorney finally sent Bernard a letter in June 2017 threatening to post the structure as inappropriate for occupancy and have the Lincoln County Sheriff cite anyone inside for trespassing if a permit request wasn’t submitted by July 14.

Bernard submitted plans two weeks later, the first since 2015. But like the first two sets, they were rejected by examiners who wrote a four-page letter listing deficiencies.

Four months later, in October 2017, the city followed up with a second letter threatening Bernard with closure unless he got a permit.

But no enforcement occurred.

It wasn’t until June 2018, at the urging of Chairwoman Helen Anderson, that the Planning Commission started discussing requiring businesses to have a county-issued occupancy permit to get a city business license. The commission also discussed the issue during July and August meetings before presenting options to the City Council in September. The council asked city manager Shannon Beaucaire to have the city attorney draft options for the ordinance.

In early December Beaucaire told Bernard that she was getting pressure from the commission, the City Council and some members of the public to get the issue resolved or enforce the city attorney’s letter.

“I told him ‘Let’s get this done. Get it fixed’,” she said.

It was only then, Bernard said, that he realized his architect had not been communicating with the city about getting engineering and other reports completed. That led to the Dec. 10 letter from the architect saying he expects to file plans and specifications for the permit the week of Jan. 14.

Owner expects resolution

Bernard hopes that he and the architect can get everything squared away with the building permits and any problems addressed by late spring.

Bernard said 2017 and 2018 were the first “truly profitable” years for the Farm Store and Yachats Brewing, which depending on the season has 12-25 employees. Sales should approach $2 million in 2018, he said, and the brewery recently added tanks to double its capacity. As the store and brewery adapt, Bernard hopes to double outside sales over the next two years. The brewery building was even constructed so it could eventually support a third-floor restaurant with a view of the ocean, Bernard said.

“It’s a small but profitable brewery with a good restaurant,” he said. (The brewery and store is closed Jan. 3-18 for its annual staff break and deep cleaning.)

Bernard said his attorney is now tasked with keeping everyone in the loop on what the architect is doing. There is money in the brewery’s capital budget to make any fixes. And he now admits his style can be too confrontational.

“I’m not wired to step backwards … I’m wired to step forward,” he said. “So now I’m now facing the repercussions of those decisions.

“I anticipate this being resolved,” Bernard said. “There are a handful of corrections we can do. I do not see any scenario that has us closing down. Not even close.”