After court ruling, plans for Panhandle Bike Ranch on hold
Jun. 13—SAGLE, Idaho — A series of mountain bike trails weaves through a steep piece of forest at the Panhandle Bike Ranch.
There are flow trails with hairpin turns and rolling bumps. There are gaps, jumps and tall wooden platforms to ride off. There's also a long beginner trail called First Rodeo that a 4-year-old recently cruised down with ease.
At the bottom, there's a spacious parking lot and two shuttle trucks specially designed to haul riders and their bikes uphill.
All of it was set and ready for opening day on Friday, when the first paying guests were set to arrive and start speeding down the trails.
Then a court ruling forced the park to hit the brakes.
In a decision filed in early June, Kootenai County District Court Judge Casey Simmons found that Bonner County erred in granting the Panhandle Bike Ranch exceptions to local zoning rules that would allow the operation of the pay-to-play mountain bike park.
The ruling was in response to an appeal from a group of opponents of the park who challenged the county's 2024 approval of a conditional use permit for the park. The judge's decision found the county didn't provide enough evidence to support their decision to approve the park and vacated the permit — essentially telling the county to take another look and forcing the bike park to stay closed for now.
Jen Kalbach, who owns the park with her husband, Scott, said the decision was "heartbreaking." The day the decision was signed, they were finishing gravel work on the parking lot and preparing to open for the summer with a staff of between 15 and 20 people.
Since the decision, they've made arrangements to offer invite-only rides for free — an opportunity they've advertised on social media and via email.
But without paying customers, they've had to scale back.
"It's a shame," Jen Kalbach said. "I just had to lay off seven people."
Opponents of the park are celebrating what they see as a win in a fight to maintain the character of the neighborhood. Shawna Champlin, who lives nearby, said building a mountain bike park in the neighborhood is like "jamming a square peg into a round hole."
"You have a dedicated, already prebuilt residential community, and then you plop this mountain bike park in the middle," Champlin said. "Now we as homeowners have to worry not only about traffic and noise, but erosion, stormwater drainage, water runoff."
This conflict over zoning regulations has spawned competing yard signs and heated sparring on social media, and it's heightened tensions in Sagle, an unincorporated area just a few miles south of Sandpoint.
It all goes back to 2023, when the Kalbachs purchased their property with plans for a mountain bike park in mind. The family lived in Utah but had been visiting North Idaho since the 1990s. They have also owned a house in the Sagle area for about a decade, Jen Kalbach said.
They were avid mountain bikers.
"Our kids have always been on bikes," Jen Kalbach said, adding that they raced competitively on teams in Utah.
The family visited similar mountain bike parks in other areas and really liked the idea — a ski hill but for bikes, where riders can skip the pain of riding uphill and maximize their downhill adrenaline rush time.
Jen and Scott — who owns a tech company called Avant Link — started talking about whether they could build one.
They started looking for properties that might work. They wanted something that wasn't flat, and that already had a road that might work for a shuttle truck.
They bought property along Five Lakes Estates Road that seemed to fit the bill. It also abutted state and federal land, which was another plus.
Bonner County had the area zoned for rural residential use, so the Kalbachs needed county permission to open a business there. They applied for a conditional use permit and worked through the approval process with the planning department.
That's about the time neighbors caught wind of the project and started raising concerns about potential crowds, parking problems, dust and increased traffic on the gravel road up to the property. They created a website under the name "Stop the Sagle Bike Park" and posted signs with the same message throughout the neighborhood, ensuring that anyone who drives up to the park will see them.
The conflict came down to whether the county classified the park as a "commercial resort" — which can't be approved in the neighborhood — or a "recreational facility" — which is allowed with a conditional use permit.
Bonner County defines a commercial resort as land that's privately owned and "devoted primarily to outdoor recreational uses conducted for profit." A recreational facility is meant for "small scale and low-intensity sports, leisure time activities and other customary and usual recreational activities."
After two hearings, the county planning department classified the park as a recreational facility. Mountain biking isn't listed as one of the approved uses for either category, but Jake Gabell, the Bonner County planning director, said they felt it was similar to other activities listed in the definition for recreational facility, such as horseback riding and snowmobiling. He also said it didn't seem much different from a disc golf course that got the same designation.
The county commission agreed and gave the Kalbachs the OK to move forward, albeit with conditions — such as limiting use to the summer and capping the number of people allowed on the property.
The opposition wouldn't take yes for an answer. A group of neighbors filed an appeal with the Bonner County District Court in August.
The case was eventually transferred to Kootenai County District Judge Casey Simmons. Attorneys for both sides filed briefs this spring, arguing over the designation. Oral arguments were held in April, and Simmons issued the ruling blocking the park's operations on June 2.
In the order, Simmons steered clear of saying which category the park belonged in, instead ruling that the county didn't provide enough evidence to support its decision. The order also said the county hadn't proven that the park had adequate water supply for fire suppression.
The decision sends the conflict back to the Bonner County planning department.
Gabell, the Bonner County planning director, said the vacated permit is one of a handful of similar decisions that have been remanded to the planning office since a recent Idaho Supreme Court decision that changed the standard of review required in these cases. Courts are remanding the cases and asking for more thorough "reasoned statements" for decisions like this one.
He said the planning department and county's civil attorney would review the file this summer. A new hearing in front of the county commission is expected in either late August or early September.
Champlin views the ruling as confirmation of she and other neighbors had been arguing — that the park has too great an impact to be considered a "recreational facility," and that it's just built in the wrong spot. She and her family moved to Sagle five years ago from northern California searching for a "rural" place to live.
"We're looking for it to be peaceful out here," she said.
For the Kalbachs, the setback is a disappointment, but not one that feels like their fault. They still feel the park can be reasonably considered a recreational facility, and that mountain biking fits within the county's definition of a "low-intensity" sport.
"It's a tough situation," Scott Kalbach said. "We did everything right, followed all the rules."
Now comes a summer of waiting. They plan to continue putting the final touches on the park. On Monday, workers were putting together trail features and a roller was mashing down the gravel on the entrance road. They want to set up some picnic tables next to the parking lot.
They're also excited to have people out to ride for free. Last weekend, they had their employees on the trails one day and members and families from the Pend Oreille Pedalers club the next.
They loved seeing people enjoying what they'd built.
"The community that we invited out here was incredibly stoked on the place," Scott Kalbach said. "We had a lot of kids out here. It was awesome."
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