A proposed dude ranch in Sonoita cleared its first hurdle Sept. 26 when the Santa Cruz County Planning and Zoning Commission voted to issue a Conditional Use Permit (CUP) by a vote of five ayes, with four members abstaining.
The Babacomari Ranch Company had applied for the permit as the first step towards developing a “high end” dude ranch on 2200 acres located on the west side of SR83 in Sonoita, known as the Encino Pasture. The dude ranch would be developed in two separate locations, one for adults and one for families, with accommodations for approximately 150 guests, pools, a wellness center, and approximately 120 horses.
Jeff Hampton, former president of the Arizona Land and Water Trust and current president of Cuenco Los Ojos, is helping to facilitate the dude ranch project. He estimates that there would be 150-200 employees and that the project will cost between $40-60 million to build.
At the hearing Hampton stated that his role in the proposed dude ranch was to “help the Brophy family come up with a development plan that will be economically sustainable and keep the ranch from being broken up. Part of the ranch has been dismembered to family members who wanted money from land sales and not from cattle income. To counter that, we’re looking for income to the ranch where they can keep the ranch together.”
Hampton pointed out that the Brophy family has been good stewards of the 28,000 acre ranch for the past 90 years, and has put 6,000 acres in conservation easements, with a plan to add 10,000 more acres in the future.
Family member Sallie Brophy said, “It makes me very sad when every now and then a disgruntled family member has to pull out and we have to parcel out another piece of property, so we do need to at least [have] a small revenue stream to keep this property going.”
Russell True, who is consulting on the project, owns three dude ranches in southern Arizona. He told the commissioners that “this is the best way to steward, and protect open land, because without it, you don’t have a dude ranch. This conceived project will be something that your county will be very proud of, and you will be much happier to have that than any of the other potential alternatives.”
The application shows the potential location of buildings, but there are no architectural renderings, nor any information available on water usage, septic, traffic, or light or noise pollution. “We have not done a detailed visual analysis of the site,” said
Rebecca Field, a landscape architect with Kimley-Horn, the engineering, planning, and design consulting firm working on the plan for the ranch.
Some of the commissioners, even though they were in favor of the concept, expressed concern about the lack of detail in the application. “We don’t have any even rough drawings,” Commissioner Linda Rushton said. “I got more information from the Patagonia Regional Times’ article.” She expressed her frustration with the process, saying, “No question that we ask is going to get an answer. Is that essentially it?”
Dillon explained that the CUP is a preliminary step in the permitting process.
“The property owner, without incurring all the cost of engineering, traffic reports, hydrology reports and all the necessary documentation that would be required for a project of this scale, will come in front of this board… to identify if you’ll even support the request,” Dillon said.
He pointed out that the development review process does not include further public input. That is “an internal process with staff and fire districts and so on. That’s pretty standard process, not just for SCC, but that’s the process for development in general.”
Dillon explained that it would be an expensive gamble for a potential CUP seeker to go through a full-scale development study without knowing whether the County would approve the permit.
At least four times during the hearing, Dillon told the commissioners that they could add conditions to the permit, and that they had the option to table the item and ask the applicant to return at a later date with more information.
However, SCC Lead Planning and Development Tech Frances Peralta cautioned that asking for more studies might cause the applicants to decide not to go forward with the project.
This sentiment was echoed by Hampton. “The CUP just gives us the right to apply. We’ve already spent tens of thousands of dollars getting the plans together, and two to three years doing it,” he said. “We can’t spend a half a million dollars doing all that and then [you] say well, we’re not going to give you the CUP.”
During the public comment period, Sandy Wolf, whose property abuts the Encino pasture, said, “I’d like to see a dude ranch, but I’m a little disturbed there aren’t as many answers before we get started with this whole process. Where do you put 150 horses?…That’s a lot of manure, a lot of urine, a lot of flies. I want to know where they’re putting all these horses.” She was also concerned about light pollution and noise.
Hampton addressed some of Wolf’s concerns, saying, “You guys [the Planning and Zoning Commission] passed an extremely comprehensive and severe light pollution ordinance,” which the ranch would have to adhere to. As for noise, he remarked, “Our guests will be some of the highest paying guests in the state of Arizona and they don’t want to listen to a bunch of noise. Do you think someone paying $1,000 a night wants to listen to a rock band?”
Although there was strong support for the concept of a dude ranch as a way to preserve the landscape expressed by all that attended the meeting, Commissioner Rushton pointed out one potential drawback she saw to having a dude ranch in Sonoita.
“There is one issue that no one is addressing,” she said. “That wind is unstoppable. It’s colder than a gravedigger’s toe in the winter and your cowboy hat’s going to be in the next county in the spring and fall and the summer is hotter than bliss. I can see people coming once, so you get ‘em once.”
Before the commission voted, Dillon one more time told the members they could ask for more information.
“This body… if it doesn’t feel confident that it has enough information related to, let’s say, viewsheds, water usage, traffic, it has all the opportunity in the world to table the item and ask the applicants to address the issues,” he said. “I’m confident that there is an interim way that their engineers and architects can probably look at some of the questions that have come up today and do a little bit more due diligence to help clarify some of that.”
After two hours of discussion, Commissioners Dan Bell, Bill Padilla, Guillermo Valencia, Ruben Gonzales, and Kathy Campana voted in favor of the motion to approve the CUP application. Nanci Pottinger, Randy Heiss, Linda Rushton and Clement Shute abstained. The abstaining members did so because they felt that they had not received enough information about the project.
“I don’t want anything to happen to that property,” Rushton said. “I came in here thinking ‘deny, deny, deny,’ and now I can’t get any of my questions answered. I will not deny, but for me there are just too many questions.”
Despite Dillon’s repeated suggestion to table the motion, the commissioners voted to grant the CUP without asking for more details about the project.
“This is the type of project we should be supporting,” Commissioner Bell stated as he cast his vote.
“I believe that this project is in no better hands than [Russell] True and the Brophy family,” Bill Padilla said. “They deserve a chance to see it through.”