Eureka Springs : New parking lot wraps inns’ owner in red tape
Posted on Thursday, May 4, 2006
EUREKA SPRINGS — Sandra Smith was ready to cry.
Members of the Board of Zoning Adjustment in Eureka Springs argued for hours on March 9 over whether to let Smith cut down two 50-year-old walnut trees.
Smith needed to make room for parking at her two downtown bed-and-breakfast inns.
“They’d have a motion,” Smith said. “Two for, two against. Then they’d start all over again. They’d have a motion to rescind the motion.”
The board eventually approved the trees’ removal — with conditions. Then it spent another hour debating the size and type of trees Smith would need to plant to make up for the loss.
“Honestly, I didn’t want to take out the trees,” Smith said. “I’m a tree-hugger from way back. I’m a lover of nature, and it was paining me to take down these trees.”
Smith owns Cliff Cottage Inn and the Place Next Door, two popular bed-and-breakfasts in this Ozark mountain town of 2, 200.
On Tuesday, Smith shuffled through documents she collected during a six-month battle to retain off-street parking for her side-by-side bed-and-breakfasts at 40 Armstrong St.
She handed over a survey of the street, which she obtained in 2003 after she bought the Good Shepherd Humane Society thrift shop, which at the time was next door to Cliff Cottage Inn.
“I had heard they were going to sell [the shop ] to a motorcycle repair shop,” Smith said. “That’s why I ended up buying it. I couldn’t imagine all that ‘vroom, vroom.’ I have a lot of money invested on Armstrong Street.”
She spent a year converting “The Doggie Shop,” as the thrift store was known, into more suites — the Artist’s Cottage and the Artist’s Studio — giving her a total of eight suites. Smith’s guests parked in part of the lot between the former thrift store and a stone house at 32 Armstrong Street.
One day last fall Smith heard the sounds of heavy machinery in the empty lot. She walked over and saw a yellow trackhoe digging a hole at the foot of the three-story rock bluff that looms behind Armstrong Street.
“I went into a panic,” she said.
Smith discovered that the lot had been sold to Earl and Gayle Fochtman of Fayetteville, who are restoring the 19 th-century stone house next door.
The Fochtmans needed to dig in the empty lot in order to install electrical and plumbing systems in the stone house, Gayle Fochtman said. The drop-off between her property and Smith’s is only temporary, she said.
Smith, meanwhile, scrambled to form a new parking plan for her guests. She had an architect design a new lot that utilized an L-shape space between two of Smith’s cottages. To make it work, two trees would have to go.
She went to the town’s Historic District Commission on March 1. Commissioners told Smith that they didn’t have authority over dirtwork and tree removal. Smith needed to go before the Board of Zoning Adjustment, they said.
The next week, that board spent two hours and 20 minutes debating the future of Smith’s trees and an 18-inch-tall stone wall, which Smith wanted to remove. The decision was subject to approval of the Historic District Commission, the board told Smith.
Smith cut down one tree but kept the other. She held a funeral for the tree that was taken down.
“It was a private service,” she said.
On March 15, Smith appeared before the commission, which deemed the stone wall “historic” and denied her request to remove it. She returned to the commission April 5 with a compromise. Smith would remove only 8 feet of the wall. The commission approved the plan, and Smith recently covered green space with gravel to create five new parking spots. Because of the tight quarters, Smith asks future guests the sizes and lengths of their vehicles, she said. She said she’s not familiar with new makes and models, so she asks, “Is it a big bear, a medium bear or small bear ?” Historic District Commissioner Melissa Greene said she sympathizes with Smith — and the Fochtmans. “Sandra Smith runs a beautiful, beautiful business,” Greene said. “She’s an asset for the town. We really wanted to work with her. The people that bought the adjoining property are doing a beautiful job, too. I think there was a lot of miscommunication and a lot of missteps.”
To contact this reporter: cbranam@arkansasonline. com
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