King Estate testimony heard

An anti-sprawl group told a Lane County hearings official Thursday that King Estate’s restaurant and the winery’s packed schedule of special events are not appropriate uses on farmland. A spokesman for the winery, Oregon’s biggest, countered that the restaurant and events are essential to marketing the King Estate wine, and that the restaurant in fact loses hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.

Thursday’s testimony before Lane County Hearings Official Gary Darnielle was the latest hearing on the appeal mounted by Goal One Coalition, a Lebanon land-use group, on behalf of its Lane County members.

Goal One Coalition is appealing the county’s Dec. 17 decision to grant a special permit that allows King Estate to continue operating its five-year-old restaurant and to continue hosting weddings and other celebrations.

The dispute is at the core of a broader statewide debate over which activities should be allowed on land zoned for exclusive farm use. Several bills addressing that question are now before the state Legislature.

Currently, counties are left to decide these land-use challenges based on a confusing jumble of state laws and court opinions.

Goal One Coalition argues that the rules are the rules, and Oregon statute prohibits full-service restaurants, such as the one at King Estate. State law currently only allows wineries to serve prepackaged foods and nonperishable beverages.

Goal One Coalition’s attorney, Anne Davies, also said that King Estate’s restaurant and special events are not “essential to the practice of agriculture” — one of the standards established by case law.

“It’s kind of the Pandora’s Box, the slippery slope,” Davies said. If restaurants are permitted on farmland, that could open the door for ice cream parlors or gas stations, she said.

King Estate’s attorney Michael Reeder responded that “as agriculture evolves, accepted farming practices and what is considered essential to farming practices evolves.” Other states, such as California and Washington, regularly have restaurants and special events to market wine, he said.

King Estate also said its restaurant and special events “are incidental and subordinate” to the winery’s farm use of growing grapes and other produce — another standard in case law.

King Estate marketing director Sasha Kadey told the hearings official that the restaurant has lost $700,000 to $1 million for each of the past three years. (He later told The Register-Guard that a more accurate figure is about $500,000 a year, and that the winery will attempt to have the figures corrected in the hearings record.)

Overall, King Estate is a very profitable company, and the winery’s visitor center is profitable if wine sales are included, Kadey said. But the restaurant, which uses locally grown foods, and the special events are to market the wine, he said.

“These activities aren’t profitable,” Kadey testified.

“It’s really intended to help us sell our wine, which is our profitable activity.”King Estate primarily markets its wine through distributors, which then sell to restaurateurs and retailers, he said.

“To be able to bring restaurateurs from all over the country and demonstrate how well our wine and other Oregon wine pairs with food is a really important reason for the restaurant,” Kadey said.

“For years and years we worked to build a reputation nationally for Oregon wine and to gain acceptance for Oregon as a quality region for growing wine, and a big part of that was relating to restaurateurs around the country,” he said.