Hillside home ended up as anything but

Neighbors’ frenzy over a five-pyramid-topped home before Blaine County Planning and Zoning Commissioners Thursday night was for naught in the end.

Because the P&Z voted Steven and Paula Childs’ rather unorthodox, single-story home up Eagle Creek north of Ketchum was not in the Mountain Overlay District--as was assumed before the hearing--the couple is free to build as they wish.

That is to say, whether it is brilliantly inventive, offensively obtrusive, or whatever anyone else called the green copper pyramid-topped residence designed by architect Jack Smith, it couldn’t matter less.

Blaine County’s Mountain Overlay District is a zone of sloped land where building is limited. The law governing that zone is the Hillside Ordinance.

When the site for the home was determined not to be on a hillside, the Childs were left needing only to get a building permit.

Before that determination was made, however, the roomful of Eagle Creek residents at the hearing was ready for a major P&Z design review of the home and a few grew quite exercised over what the architect Smith described as design referencing natural, mountain, and Native American landscapes.

Some neighbors said they just didn’t feel a home that would be so sculptural was right for their isolated draw, and hoped the P&Z would tell the Childs to make their home less visible.

"I can’t legislate my taste on someone else," the Childs’ next-door neighbor to-be Judy D’Angelo said, adding, "This is a rural area. We just think that the structure is out of scope for the area."

Blaine County Zoning Administrator Deborah Vignes advised the P&Z to examine the home under the Hillside Ordinance, and the hearing was set up to review the Childs’ plans in light of that law.

"Deborah made the correct decision [about the site] when viewing it from the road and from viewing it on the map, however, it’s up to people like us to scrutinize these decisions and make fair decisions," P&Z member Tom Bowman said.

Because P&Z agreed the Childs’ residence was not on a hillside--and voted as such--neither they nor neighbors have a say in how the home will look.