Delays dog airport kennel
But 20 months after he first applied to build at the Chico Municipal Airport, Elliott is far from breaking ground and feels stonewalled by the city.
“I don’t mind waiting, but I just see these constant little hurdles,” he said. “I want the community to know that there’s a lot of difficulty and no one in the city is willing to step up and make a decision.”
City Planning Director Kim Seidler agrees that it’s taken a lot longer than it should have to see Elliott’s project though to acceptance or rejection. “It’s taken too long,” Seidler said. “We are bringing this forward.
“The main problem is that it isn’t allowed in the zoning right now,” Seidler said.
The issue, Seidler said, is that Elliott wants to set up shop in a part of the airport reserved for “airport-commercial” development—land that the airport is holding onto for businesses that would support the flying aspect of the airport. The city Airport Commission decided against allowing kennels in those zones and wouldn’t issue Elliott a use permit. “I don’t think they would have an issue in the ‘airport-manufacturing’ zone as opposed to the ‘airport-commercial’ zone,” Seidler said.
Meanwhile, the city is coincidentally in the process of revising the list of permitted uses in airport zones, and the Planning Commission is scheduled to hear the Airport Commission’s suggestions for changes next month.
Seidler suggested that Elliott hold out and make his pitch to the commission at those hearings.
Elliott, still frustrated, wonders how the city can meet its goal of drawing businesses to the airport even as it’s turning them away. His kennel would have employed eight or nine people. And he’d rather not push it into the airport-manufacturing zone, which is farther from Cohasset Road and the view of potential patrons. Elliott learned last week that he’s lost the chance to buy the piece of property at Marauder and Corsair that he preferred and would now have to locate farther into the airport on a site that would require about $45,000 in upgrades.
Elliott said his experience in Chico is a far cry from the treatment he got in Portland, Ore., recently as he and his wife, veterinarian Elizabeth Colleran, opened a cat hospital there and enjoyed smooth sailing with city departments.
This isn’t Elliott’s first business venture in Chico, either. He used to own a bike shop next to Duffy’s Tavern on Main Street.
Even if it’s too late for his project, Elliott said he plans to attend the Planning Commission hearings and argue for zoning that would allow businesses such as the one he proposed. "I don’t want someone else to go through this same thing," he said. "The process needs to be made easier."
