A planned expansion of St. Barbara’s Catholic Church appears to be moving forward, with the Powell City Council giving its blessing to the project on Monday night.

St. Barbara’s leaders want to extend the front of their building by roughly 16 feet to add more indoor gathering space and handicap accessible bathrooms. The project has drawn opposition from a few neighbors, who are concerned about how the extension could impact visibility at the nearby intersection of Absaroka and Third streets. Their concerns prompted the city council to temporarily table the proposed zoning change the church needs to move forward.

However, after getting more information from St. Barbara’s leaders and parishioners on Monday night, council members voted unanimously to approve the rezoning on the second of three readings.

“I don’t see any reason not to move [forward] with the zoning change,” Mayor John Wetzel said following more than 30 minutes of public comments.

Although some neighbors reiterated their concerns about increased congestion and an obscured intersection, “to me, it looks much better than a lot of them that we run across,” Councilman Steve Lensegrav said of St. Barbara’s plans.

The church is seeking to move from residential general to business general zoning. While the business designation allows buildings to go up to the sidewalk, they must maintain a so-called “clear visibility triangle” on the corner.

St. Barbara’s expansion will be better than some residential intersections, Lensegrav said, “that have trees and bushes and everything else there that you can’t see around them much worse than [this].”

Making the case

The expansion has been discussed within the church for roughly a decade. When Fr. James Schumacher came to St. Barbara’s three years ago, “it was immediately obvious that there is a desperate need for a handicapped accessible bathroom,” he told the council.

The church currently has two restrooms. One is out of the way and about the size of one you’d find in a camper trailer, said longtime parishioner Lee Craig, while the other isn’t much bigger.

St. Barbara’s also wants to add a bigger gathering area, so people have an indoor space to visit after services.

Neighbors and some planning and zoning commission members have voiced concerns that the expansion will simply result in people and children congregating closer to the street, but Craig said the intent of the expansion is to enable them to stay inside.

No church representatives attended the Planning and Zoning Commission’s April 28 meeting on the proposed rezoning, nor the council’s first two meetings on the subject last month. But a trio of nearby residents spoke against the project, primarily objecting to the potential impact to their neighborhood and the intersection. Their concerns prompted the council to table the rezoning request on May 19 and invite the church to present more information at Monday’s meeting.

More than a dozen St. Barbara’s members and leaders attended and a half-dozen spoke to the council. They noted ways that the church has tried to help with congestion over the years, including building a large parking lot to the east.

They also made the case that the intersection and its four-way stop are safer than several others along Absaroka Street — including some two-way stops where buildings partially obscure the view. Additionally, the relatively new requirement to maintain a clear visibility triangle will prevent the church from getting as close to the corner as the former Wells Fargo building on Second Street or the CenturyLink building that’s across the street from
St. Barbara’s.

However, the three neighbors in attendance at Monday’s meeting were unpersuaded.

Continued opposition

“This is going to obscure views going east to west and going north to south,” said Rebecca Smith, who lives across Absaroka Street from the church. “It’s going to be very dangerous. Children will be the first fatalities.”

“It’s a four-way stop,” parishioner Daniel Catone called out from the audience.

Smith countered that the parishioners don’t live in the neighborhood and “have no idea how people drive” in the area; she said drivers often speed and don’t stop at the signs.

Smith’s husband William, who also spoke, was seriously injured at the intersection a number of years ago, when a vehicle rear-ended his motorcycle.

St. Barbara’s members later argued that the church’s expansion shouldn’t be limited just because some drivers break the law. And Craig said the intent of the expansion is to actually make the set-up more safe for members and children.

“Believe me when I tell you, the safety of our children is as important to us as it is to you,” Craig told the council, adding, “We would not propose this addition if we felt it would endanger lives.”

While the neighbors have suggested the church should expand to the east rather than toward the street, doing so would involve cutting through a weight-bearing wall and building on top of utilities, Craig said. 

Architects concluded that the church’s best option is to build to the south, he said, and the 15-foot setback requirement in the residential zone doesn’t allow enough space.

Smith, however, reiterated her call for the church to go east instead.

“If that seems to be not right with you, maybe you should think about it,” she told the church members, “because it’s not right with me that you want to obscure everything on my street and take up the space.”

‘An underlying bias’

The discussion over the project has at times been tense. 

Another neighbor, Darin Wood, charged at the May 19 meeting that he hadn’t “seen any interest in our neighborhood [from the church], other than in a predatory manner” as he complained about having to fight with members over parking.

On Monday, parishioner Craig responded to another of Wood’s comments that was previously printed in the Tribune, in which Wood said it was “not like the Catholics are hurting for money or power.”

That statement “does nothing but create dissension, is irrelevant to the discussion and shows, in my mind, an underlying bias,” Craig told the council. He made a point of saying that St. Barbara’s members will need to raise all of the money for the expansion themselves.

Meanwhile, parishioner Catone suggested Monday that the zoning regulations were a case of red tape stopping people from doing good.

“It is a matter of basic human dignity, religious liberty and serving our neighbors — all values that this community has long upheld,” he said of the proposed expansion and additional bathrooms.

The financial adviser also argued that the city was running afoul of the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA), which protects churches from discrimination in zoning laws.

RLUIPA was also raised by attorneys for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 2023, as the church sought permission to build a new temple in Cody. Church attorneys contended that the federal law prevented the city from imposing restrictions on the temple.

While the threat of litigation from the LDS church played into the Cody planning board’s deliberations, Catone’s mention of RLUIPA didn’t appear to be a factor in the Powell council’s vote on Monday night.

One more vote

Councilman Lensegrav indicated his concerns were alleviated by seeing the draft floor plan for the church’s expansion. He said the project would still leave a lot of good sight lines at the intersection.

As for Councilman Troy Bray, he said he didn’t have any reason to tell St. Barbara’s how to use its property.

“This is what they want to do, and I haven’t heard a good reason why they shouldn’t be able to [do it],” Bray said.

Going back to the issue directly before the body, Councilman Zane Logan said he believed it was appropriate to rezone St. Barbara’s 0.8-acre parcel as business general, noting there are businesses all around the property.

The council must still approve the zoning change on a third reading before it becomes final.