A Door County judge ruled the village of Sister Bay was wrong to deny a local short-term rental owner its license in a dispute about parking spaces and grandfather clauses at the property.
The case involved Captain’s Cottage, LLC, which in May 2024 had its application to renew its existing short-term rental (STR) license turned down by the village because its parking spaces didn’t meet the current codes for STRs, which requires two to four 10-by-20-foot asphalt parking stalls that aren’t in the public right-of-way and with at least 10 feet of setback from the neighboring lot line.
The village said an inspection revealed the site had no true stall or asphalt area, and the available parking space indicated didn’t meet setback requirements, all of which would have required replacing the driveway and redoing the landscaping at the front of the property.
Door County Judge David Weber ruled in favor of the owners of Captain’s Cottage, a single-family residence and short-term rental property in Sister Bay, saying the village wrongly denied them renewal of their short-term rental license in 2024 by ignoring grandfather clauses in village and state law and retroactively trying to enforce zoning changes regarding parking space to the long-existing driveway.
However, Captain’s Cottage owners Adam and Birgid White and attorney Bjorn Johnson argued state law and the village’s own ordinances disallow code violations from being applied retroactively to preexisting conditions that don’t conform to the codes, as they said is the case for this STR.
The village denied the Whites’ arguments, and Johnson, joined by the Milwaukee-based Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty (WILL), filed a complaint June 20, 2024. The complaint said the home was built in 1919, the village adopted parking and setback codes related to the case between 1995 and 2006 and the parking situation hasn’t changed at the property, so the parking stalls should be grandfathered in as acceptable.
The original complaint also noted the village issued the Whites an STR license every previous year since they bought the property in 2020. They rented the unit out as an STR since then, as the previous owner did starting in 2018, and have received or renewed a license since the village began requiring one on 2021.
In a June 26 hearing, Door County Circuit Court Judge David Weber granted a temporary injunction against the village to allow Captain’s Cottage to resume renting out its space until a final decision was made about its license, saying the village didn’t follow its own ordinances when it denied the license renewal. Weber also ruled the village obstructed the Whites from appealing the denial and needed to allow them to appeal.
The Whites and Johnson subsequently appealed the denial of the license, but the village’s Zoning Board of Appeals voted to continue denying the license in its Sept. 22, 2024, meeting, which led to the plaintiffs filing to appeal the board’s decision to the court.
In a May 30 hearing, Weber ruled the Whites’ driveway and property fall under grandfather clauses under village and state law and the village cannot deny Captain’s Cottage an STR license on the grounds that the driveway doesn’t meet current ordinances. A written judgment was filed June 13.
Another part of the case was if parking at Captain’s Cottage was allowable in the driveway’s unused part of the right-of-way for a vehicle of less than 12,000 pounds under grandfather clauses. Weber ruled no exemptions exist for village ordinances on right-of-way parking, but he noted the village currently has no ordinance that prohibits that specific scenario.
“This is a great win for our clients and for all property owners in Door County,” WILL Deputy Counsel, Luke Berg said in a news release. “As the judge held, municipalities cannot force property owners to choose between a short-term rental license and their vested property rights. It is well-established that old structures are grandfathered from new zoning codes. This doctrine is essential to protect property owners.
“This new ruling establishes what the Whites have argued all along – that their driveway is grandfathered and cannot be the basis for denying them a short-term rental license.”
Contact Christopher Clough at 920-562-8900 or cclough@gannett.com.
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This article originally appeared on Green Bay Press-Gazette: Sister Bay short-term rental owners win case against village over license