A local business owner is throwing in the towel and has put his building up for sale, arguing he simply can’t fight town hall anymore.
Todd Simmer, owner and operator of the Local Yokel market and Big Sky Landscaping, said he’s tired of fighting with Town of Cochrane administration over zoning and land use issues, which he claims have made it impossible to continue operating his business. He said he intends to re-open Local Yokel somewhere else in Rocky View County in the future.
The Town’s position is the municipality has done everything they can to accommodate Simmer, but since he won’t play by the rules that apply to all businesses, and won’t respond to their calls anymore, there’s not much more they can do.
When Simmer was informed the Town told The Eagle he could get his zoning issue addressed by submitting an application for rezoning, he refused to do that as well, giving no reason why he would not.
The Eagle spent six weeks investigating the convoluted saga involving allegations based on telephone conversations that eventually boiled down to a “he said, she said” dispute between Simmer and the Town.
Simmer’s main complaint revolves around a zoning bylaw change a year ago that affected his 365 Railway St. W. location. He wants to run the market and his landscaping business out of the same building.
Last February, council approved a new Land Use Bylaw (LUB) designating the land including Simmer’s building as Business Industrial. The designation allows for a garden centre, but not a farmers’ market.
No land use designation exists anywhere in the Cochrane bylaws that allows both a garden supply centre and market to operate within the same site.
Simmer said the Town did not notify him of the upcoming change as they’re required to do under provincial regulations. The Town’s retort is they tried to reach him by mail, but he didn’t respond, and they followed up with emails and phone calls.
Town administration claim in the lead-up to a public meeting last year, since they hadn’t received a response, they called Simmer on the phone and asked him what land uses he wanted. But the Town claims he did not return their call, and nor did he attend the meeting.
In an email to The Eagle, Town administration claimed the land use designation change last February was approved following “extensive consultation and public engagement.”
Town administrators initiated the LUB review and rewrite project in 2018 in order to ensure the bylaw met the land use and development needs of Cochrane amid rapid growth and to reflect the unique character and natural landscape of the town.
The email continues: “The LUB update included extensive engagement to alert the public of proposed zoning changes which included online mapping, social media posts, public meetings, town-wide mail outs, website updates, surveys on the Let’s Talk Cochrane site, and reaching out to individual landowners in certain cases.
“Numerous attempts to contact the landowner at this site were unsuccessful.”
The Local Yokel market opened on Labour Day 2022, with the goal of offering Cochranites a year-round farmers' market, even though that use was not permitted at the site. And as of this week, the Town has not told Simmer he has to close, while they try to cooperate with him. To date they have been rebuffed.
“We have not shut him down, we have asked for his cooperation to rectify the situation,” said Drew Hyndman, executive director of development and infrastructure services.
“We have not put a stop order, we haven’t fined him, we’ve done nothing – we have other tools available but we’re saying ‘Can you work with us to get this resolved?’”
Hyndman said there also is no business license on file to run a market, something that all businesses are required to have before opening their doors.
Regulations and bylaws aside, Hyndman added he thought Simmer’s year-round farmers market idea has merit, and the Town is willing to work with Simmer to make it happen at that location, but he has to play by the rules.
“It’s a great concept, but there’s still a process he has to go through,” he said.
Staff from Hyndman’s department are still trying to set up a meeting with Simmer, whose wife Rayanne submitted a complaint to the province this week.
When asked on Friday if he had a concluding comment he’d like to make after six weeks of conversations with The Eagle, Simmer’s texted response was that he had “Nothing left to say.”
