Rainbow Trailer Park residents are facing the loss of their homes in Oak Creek Canyon north of Sedona.

At a neighborhood meeting on Wednesday, Aug. 17, at the Rainbow Trout Farm, Michelle Bach, designer and planner with EAPC Architects Engineers, of Phoenix discussed the rezoning of the three parcels totaling 22.11 acres, and reducing the number of residences from about 80 trailers to 43 manufactured homes. The parcels include the Rainbow Trout Farm, Rainbow Trailer Park and Living Springs Camp.

Bach was leading the meeting on behalf of the property owner of Rainbow Trout Farm: Northern Broadcast Oak Creek, LLC, owned by Cady Gokey, Lydia Bishop Gokey and EPC Exchange Corp., out of Seattle, Wash.

“This property is currently a general zoning district within Coconino County. It is not in a Sedona zoning ordinance,” Bach said. “It is in Coconino County. There are a few areas of this prop­erty that have been grand­fathered in over the years that are not actual permitted uses … so, anything that we looked at redoing is requiring us to bring the entire property up to code standards, which is what we’d like to do anyway.

Bach said the property owners are asking for a rezoning from a general zone to a multi-family residential, manufactured housing and commercial event space zoning at a half acre per lot.

“The proposed zoning is the most restrictive neighborhood zone in Coconino County zoning district,” Bach said.

“The zone also for some of the items that are already existing on property we’d like to add to enhance the use of all areas, is requiring us to add an conditional-use permit,” Bach said.

“Right now there are certain aspects that the [owner] goes and gets temporary permits for in order to hold certain events,” she said. “We’d like to both ease that paperwork and pain and just put a permanent [permit] on the property, so that [the owners] do not have to [get a permit] every single time. That is mainly going towards the existing Living Springs Camp and items that are there.”

Rainbow Trailer Park

Rainbow Trail Park has been on the Trout Farm property for decades, Bach noted.

“Today it does hold roughly about 80 lots on the property. Not all those lots are actually being used. Some of them are empty lots now,” Bach added.

“Our initial plan here is, again architectural, is to remove a vast majority of the homes and redevelop the entire property into single-manufactured home developments,” she said.

“These will all be single-story structures — all mixed up,” Bach said. “They range from 450 square feet, called a ‘tiny home house’ to 1,000 square feet, the more smaller, kind of two bedroom. Each has two designated parking stalls and a drive-way format to each of the homes. They each have yards centered around them, so that everyone has their own garden space.”

“It keeps the property open, but [without] putting a massive single-story building on the property, which is what we don’t want to do,” Bach said. “We want a low [profile]. We want to keep the open-space of the property underneath. Everything that comes with it. No homes will be redeveloped close to the creek. We will have to maintain all of today’s flood zone requirements and restrictions.”

Public Comments

“I’m just wondering how the entity that can pour millions of dollars into this property [displaces] old tenants that live here currently into an environ­ment that is 100% unfriendly for people who are trying to rent a long-term rental situation and displace everybody,” resi­dent Enocha Ranjita Ryan said. “Then try to act like you’re acting ecological when you’re going to put all these trailers into some kind of landfill and then bring in these manufac­tured homes which are full of toxins and everything else.”

Regarding conditional use permit restrictions on the property, Ryan said they allow people to “feel safe and feel protected feel like they’re living here under [an] umbrella which grandfathered them in.”

Ryan said she has a condi­tional-use permit for a healing sanctuary where people can commune in the natural environment.

“This just sounds like every­thing that you might be trying to spin into something beau­tiful and something for nature. It’s totally the opposite.”

The owner has a tiny home community near the property already, Ryan said.

“I don’t think [EAPC Architects Engineers] are going to be able to alter the natural flow of the creek,” Rob Olson owner of Briar Patch Inn said. “That would [mean] they want to increase the grade, which is going to put more water through a narrower channel, which is going to kind of force it up and take the highway out.”

“They’re going to have to build a major bridge here,” he said.

Olson urged residents to contact Coconino County Planning and Zoning Principal Planner Bob Short, then the Coconino County Board of Supervisors.

After the proposal is sent over the Coconino Zoning Department, the next step is a series of public hearings with Coconino County officials.

Michelle Bach, of EAPC Architects Engineers, speaks and answers questions about the plans for the Rainbow Trout Farm and Rainbow Trailer Park properties.