Duluth hoop house urban ag zoning help

[Lindsay Rebhan]

Anyone with suggestions, please post here or email Francois directly:
lamica...@yahoo.com

Hello,

We have permitting issues for our hoop house and we are at a loss on
how to resolve this. I have the feeling that this must have happened
in other cities and I am hoping that someone who might have faced a
similar problems could give us some pointers, clarifications, or
references on how to address this. Please respond to me directly at:
lamica...@yahoo.com, I will compile and share the responses with
the list.

Thank you very much

Francois

Here is our story:
We are a restaurant business in Duluth Minnesota that has started an
urban farm to grow some produce for the restaurant. We are located in
a R1 zoning which allow for urban agriculture. We have installed a
hoop house 20’ W x 32’ in which we want to operate an aquaponic system
year around.

When we initially inquired about regulations and permitting, on two
occasions we were told that we didn’t need a permit since the
structure was dimmed “non-permanent” (lacking a solid foundation and
constructed of parts that can be disassembled. Car ports are in this
category, sheds are not). Once the structure up and the aquaponic
system in place, we called-in an inspector to get a permit to bring in
the electricity from the house. This resulted in a “Stop Work Oder”
after a revision of the initial determination of “non-permanent”
structure.

To be deemed non-permanent this hoop house couldn’t be longer than
30’ (which was overlooked twice by the by the Building Safety Office,
ours is 32’) or, in the case that it is longer than 30’, it couldn’t
be up for more than 180 days.

At this point we cannot shorten the structure without a great expense
and months of delays since the aquaponic setup is in place and
occupies most of the length of the hoop house, the 4500 gal tank being
in the ground.

Taking the hoop house skin off for 6 month wouldn’t make any sense.

To qualify for a permit, the structure must be certified for a snow
load-bearing weight of 42 pounds per square foot. When we called the
manufacturer (one of the largest in Minnesota), they told us that they
wouldn’t sell us one of their hoop house if they had to certify for
such a load bearing.

We could possibly, using the existing structure of the tiered
aquaponic system, strengthen the roof of the hoop house ourselves, but
we would have to have this certified by an engineering firm which will
certainly be absolutely prohibitive.

The greatest irony at this point is that we are allowed to keep the
hoop house up until May under the 180 days temporary structure
provision which makes the load-bearing requirement irrelevant! In
short we could keep it up every winter – regardless of the possibility
(very remote for us) of someone getting crushed while sleeping under
this structure during a heavy snow storm – if we take it down during
the summer!

Farmers don’t seem to be facing this kind of issue. Why are we, if we
are zoned for urban agriculture?

Could we get an exemption if our structure is duly insured and we
signed a responsibility weaver clearing the city and county of all
responsibility?

Could this be brought in front of the Building Appeal Board?

How could we get a variance?