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B.R. Cohn appeals open-space easement, event restrictions

KENWOOD – The Sonoma County board of supervisors is set to consider at its meeting on Tuesday how much agri-tourism is too much on a Sonoma Valley winery property protected under state law from development and whether the county needs to take an extraordinary step to safeguard it further.

Bruce Cohn, owner of B.R. Cohn winery and longtime Doobie Brothers band manager, is appealing a county board of zoning adjustments decision in January to require a perpetual open-space easement on the portion of his 48-acre property on which he currently grows winegrapes and olives.

Mr. Cohn’s property already is protected from development under a Williamson Act contract. Per the California Land Conservation Act of 1965, the local governing authority drafts a 10-year rolling-term contract with a farmer to keep the land in agriculturally related use in exchange for a lower property-tax rate.

The state Department of Conservation, which oversees county compliance with the Williamson Act, found in a 2005 audit that Sonoma County’s rules for such contracts were too lax regarding “compatible uses” with farmland. The county now has interim rules that land under such a contract can use no more than 15 percent, or five acres, for compatible uses, which include event centers and tasting rooms.

Mr. Cohn’s wine processing, sales and visitor facilities take up about 6 percent of the property.

“The purpose of the open-space easement for the B.R. Cohn Winery is to ensure that the property’s compatible uses do not expand beyond the 3.2 acre area where they are presently located,” wrote Nick Chase, a county planner handling the project, in the staff report for the June 17 supervisorial hearing.

Local governments can use an open-space easement to rein in compatible uses on land under a Williamson Act contract, according to Mr. Chase. But the one required for B.R. Cohn, if the board of supervisors denies the appeal, would be the county’s first required for that purpose.

The only other winery with Williamson Act-compatible uses permitted since the county audit was Trione Vineyards & Winery in Geyserville, approved in 2006 and set to open this fall, according to Mr. Chase. But the winery’s allowed events topped out at 200 people.

The conservation easement was one of the conditions for approval of Mr. Cohn’s request for a larger barrel warehouse and relocation of olive oil sales and tasting as well as a move of the special events area where the annual two-day music festival that attracts up to 3,000 a day is held.

Mr. Cohn also is appealing the zoning board’s rejection of a request to hold a second two-day, 3,000-people-per-day concert event in the fall, its requirement that such large events be re-evaluated every five years under a use permit rather than an event permit and its requirement that those concerts be for charity.

“It restricts what I can do on the property,” Mr. Cohn said of the conditions.

County planning staff is recommending to the board of supervisors that it could modify the use permit to split the two-day event into two single-day events for 3,000 people in spring and fall.

Mr. Cohn said he would want any easement, if upheld, to have a sunset clause to coincide with a 10-year phaseout of his Williamson Act contract, should he decide to go that route.

In his staff report, Mr. Chase suggested the board of supervisors keep the easement in perpetuity but offered the option of concurrent easement and contract terms.

The B.R. Cohn contract-easement situation illustrates that these tax breaks should not be taken up lightly, according to Nick Frey, president of the Sonoma County Winegrape Commission. “People going into the Williamson Act need to be forward-thinking in the changes they want to make down the road,” Mr. Frey said.

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