New owners of the Bill Monroe Memorial Music Park are examining their options after the Brown County Board of Zoning Appeals denied their request for operating flexibility last week.

The board voted 4-1 to deny the request to expand from 12 events to up to 120 days of “performance activity,” adding non-musical, family-friendly events like car shows, magic shows and Scout camp-outs to the well-known lineup of bluegrass, blues and gospel festivals.

The new owners need to be able to change the business model to reverse the “downward spiral” in the park’s income, said James T. Roberts, attorney for the new owners, Rex Voils and Ben Voils.

The park has been losing money for the past five years, Roberts said, presenting documents from former park owner Dwight Dillman’s accountant. But in the past six months, when the new owners have been involved, the park has seen increased revenue and net profit, the accountant wrote.

If the new owners could hold 30 one-night shows and sell 1,000 tickets at $30 each, they estimated they could bring in $450,000 more to the park after expenses. That would help improve the bathroom and shower facilities, which are one reason that attendance has been lacking in recent years, speakers said. The cost to do that work was estimated at $650,000.

The park hosted eight events in 2016, six events in 2017 and six in 2018; all were music-related. Over those three years, the operators turned away a total of five other possible events because they weren’t focused around music, and nine others didn’t happen because of date conflicts, weather, cancellations by the promoter or because they weren’t a fit for the park.

When the petition came before the zoning board last month, board members asked for an ideal schedule of events the owners would like to see at the park if they didn’t have the current restrictions.

Their proposed April-to-October calendar shows “local music” one or two days a month; 32 other one- or two-day events like car shows, an egg hunt, Scout events, paintball, movie nights, a quilt show, Ironman competition, 5K run, comedy, magic and ventriloquist shows, a motorcycle show and a couple “community days,” all mostly on weekends.

Roberts said the idea was “trying to get the concerts or things that don’t come up to that level of intrusion on the community that a festival does.”

The proposed calendar also showed 11 events lasting three days or more. One, a Christmas light festival, was scheduled from Nov. 29 through the end of the year.

Zoning board member John Dillberger said it appeared the new owners were trying to build a different business than what the park had been approved to do in the past — “which I’m willing to consider,” he said.

“I personally think they have the wrong zoning for what they want to do,” added zoning board member Jane Gore.

Dillberger and zoning board member Darla Brown said they’d like to see the owners apply for a change in zoning.

“I’m of the same opinion,” said zoning board President Lamond Martin. “I don’t want to try to get into trying to tell people how to run their business.”

“Which is why we’re having trouble deciding; that’s what it feels like we’re trying to do,” Gore added.

The board then heard about 30 minutes of comments from friends of the park and neighbors, who were about equally split on urging the board to vote “yes” and pointing out the potential negative impact the change could have on the neighborhood.

“I very much want to see the Bill Monroe music park remain for another 50 to 75 years, and I’d like to see it thrive, but I don’t think this special exception is the way to do it,” Dillberger said before the vote, which was 4-1 to deny the request. Martin voted in favor of it.

Outside the meeting room, Rex Voils said he wasn’t sure what the next move would be. He said he’d have to talk with Roberts about the possibility of refiling for a different zoning.

“I can’t believe they would really want to shut down something like that,” Voils said. “… That park’s been there since 1939, you know? 1939. And they want to shut it down.”

As they left, supporters wished him good luck.

“We’re stepping in and redoing a park that is a failure,” Voils said. “… So what’s it going to be now? It’s going to fail now. It’s a shame.”

Why is this at issue?

The 50-acre park, which includes tent and RV camping, cabins, outdoor stages and a bluegrass museum, received a “special exception” from the zoning board in 1992 when Bill Monroe and his son, James, wanted to add activities there, according to documents from the planning and zoning office and newspaper archive stories.

The park had already been hosting music festivals and camping for 30-plus years, the 1992 application said. The Monroes wanted to add about 300 campsites “to allow for continued use of festival grounds with expanded use.”

At the time, parts of the property were zoned residential (R1), general business (GB) and forest reserve (FR).

The park had been operating long before the county’s zoning code was created, so its use had been “grandfathered in.” But anytime the site plan or use of a “grandfathered” property is changed, it needs to conform to the current zoning code, which is why it needed to be reviewed in 1992, said Planning Director Chris Ritzmann.

Camping and outdoor theaters are allowed in FR zoning with a special exception, and FR zoning is what most of the property has now. However, when the zoning board granted the 1992 special exception, they agreed to allow “as many as 12 musical events per year” at the park and limit the hours those events can run, according to a newspaper story about that meeting. Those are the restrictions the current owners are seeking to change.

Other conditions included installing a six-foot-high, chain link fence between the festival grounds and homes to the northwest, and planting a buffer of vegetation around the entire property.

The former park owners didn’t plant that buffer all the way around the park as ordered 26 years ago, zoning board members pointed out. That was an issue for some of the speakers at the August and September meetings.

Before the September meeting, Roberts gave the board a document signed by the four immediate neighbors on all sides of the park which said they didn’t think that any additional buffer was needed.

The new owners did offer to erect a privacy fence along McDonald Drive and/or plant grasses to create a barrier.

Roberts also gave the board a document showing how much income could be lost if the buffer was planted where it didn’t already exist and all activity at the park was moved back 50 feet from the property line. Those estimates were $274,860.51 for lost camping income and $127,725 for lost ticket income. Doing so “would cost the park a huge amount of revenue and accomplish nothing, since the immediate neighbors are not objecting,” Roberts wrote.

Other neighbors had different opinions, saying that noise carries differently depending on terrain and foliage, and it wasn’t right to impose the park’s noises on them and possibly increase them by allowing the expanded usage.

No one who spoke said they were against the park’s long tradition in this community.

“I love the music. I’m not against the heritage,” said Jack O’Hara of Freeman Ridge Road.

“I am against hearing music I don’t want to hear when I don’t want to hear it. I would like to have a choice.”

Preserving ‘legacy’

The problem with asking for general business zoning for the park is that camping isn’t allowed, Roberts said during the hearing.

Zoning board attorney David Schilling told him they’d need a special exception or a planned unit development (PUD) to make that work.

Right now, a small part of the park is zoned general business (GB), but most of it is zoned forest reserve (FR), including the camping and stage areas.

A public camp and an outdoor theater are allowed in FR, but both require special exceptions.

An outdoor theater is allowed in GB zoning as well, but it also needs a special exception. Camping is not allowed in GB even with a special exception, according to a chart in the zoning code.

Ritzmann said the park fits the description of a private recreational development (PRD), but back in 1992, that term didn’t really exist. A definition was just adopted last year.

There are also different ways the property could be split up and rezoned, she said, but it’s not certain that they’d give the owners everything they want, where they want it.

During the hearing, Roberts said he thinks the special exception the park currently has from 1992 could give the owners more freedom than they think they have. They’ve been interpreting the limit of “12 musical events” to mean that they can only have musical events, and they’ve turned down events that were not musical in nature. “I think that’s a misinterpretation of the intent,” Roberts said. He said he could argue that if they wanted to have a car show or an Easter egg hunt, it was not regulated or controlled by the special exception.

Voils said he wasn’t immediately sure how that could affect the business until he consulted with Roberts.

Mike Carmin, an attorney representing a group of people opposed to this change, encouraged the board to try to find a compromise that would allow the business to be successful, yet not infringe on neighbors.

“Whether there’s a (county) noise ordinance or not, excessive noise beyond the property line materially affects the use of adjacent properties. It’s called a nuisance,” he said.

“I’ve not heard anyone that wants to interfere with the legacy, but I don’t think the legacy was the Bike Fest, or adults-only entertainment, or even a paintball event. That’s not the legacy. and if the legacy only can be preserved to allow these additional events for a revenue basis, that’s understandable … that may be be perfectly reasonable thing to do, but you can do that with some restrictions and limitations to allow it to be compatible or fit in with the neighborhood that has developed around it in these last 50 years.

“Some people moved there because that’s what they wanted, but some people moved there when it was a whole different world out there, and that world has changed, and they’re being told that’s too bad for you; we need to change and you’re just going to have to allow us to change. And that’s not an acceptable answer,” he said.

“We also heard that if we don’t make some changes, this business is not going to survive,” said David Simon, a lifelong county resident who spoke in favor of the change. “And that’s going to affect us forever — all of us.”

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If the owners of the Bill Monroe Memorial Music Park decided to go for a different rezone, these are the options they could pursue, according to Chris Ritzmann, planning director:

1. Request a new special exception to allow a travel trailer park in the forest reserve (FR)-zoned part of the park (which is most of it, except from the museum to the road), but this would probably mean giving up the primitive camping. The general business (GB)-zoned area (from the museum to the highway) is able to have an outdoor theater, but there probably isn’t room for it there, she said.

2. Rezone the FR-zoned parcel to GB and request a planned unit development (PRD). “This would involve numerous public hearings, but it would be a tidier way to utilize the property for mixed commercial uses,” she said. However, in commercial PUDs, 60 percent of the property has to be zoned GB or AB (accommodation business).

3. Request a PRD (private recreational development). Ritzmann believes the park fits this description, but there was no definition of this term in the zoning ordinance until last year — even though multiple businesses throughout the county have been granted PRDs for more than 15 years.

4. Divide the property in two and seek two different special exceptions. “This would be impractical because at least one would still have mixed zoning, and probably only one would be allowed to use the existing driveway,” she said.

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