The Stepping Stones Farm and Event Center has withdrawn their application for a special zoning exception – for now.
Isabella “Boo” Martin met with Temple’s Zoning Board of Adjustment Thursday and announced her intention to withdraw the application while she and her team worked to meet zoning requirements and gathered the correct legal information to present to the board.
“It’s off our plate,” said ZBA Chair Bill Ezell after the meeting. Ezell, as an abutter to the Stepping Stones property, has had to recuse himself throughout this case. Once Martin “gets her ducks in a row,” he said, she can come back and re-apply for the special exception.
Martin said that this was her best option given the circumstances, and that she wanted to make the process easier for everybody.
“The town boards are really working hard,” she said, adding that she appreciated all that the ZBA had done to guide her through the process so far.
“I truly believe they want us in business,” Martin said, speaking of the town boards. When she first brought her case to the boards, she said, “They were like, ‘We’re so glad to have you in town.’”
But the process simply became too complex for everybody, Martin said. “It was like we’re trying to play tennis, but none of us know how to hold a racket or keep score,” she said.
Martin has had the property for 50 years, she said, and found herself in unfamiliar waters as she tried to submit variances for a homestead built in the 1750s and the other work necessary to meet zoning ordinances.
“If you give me someone who wants to celebrate their 91st birthday, I can do that, I know how to do that, I don’t know how to write a variance,” she said.
Martin’s next steps are already in the works, as she has hired a lawyer to help her and her team get the application all set to go for next time. Once it’s “bulletproof and ironclad,” she said, they’ll try again, in the “very near future.”
“I want to be a good member of the town,” she said. “I want to meet the zoning requirements.”
Until that point, Stepping Stones has permission to fulfill the contracts that they already have for the rest of the year.
“It’s been really stressful,” Martin said. But despite this, she said, she intends to keep moving forward.
“It’s a sweet business that people love,” she said. “It’s a happy place, and it’s worth fighting for.”