Court Opinion

ID: 9692911
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 16:12:08.850082+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:19:38.048110
License: Public Domain

SCHULTZ, Justice
(dissenting).
While I have doubts about the validity of the votes by the five members of the board of adjustment with a financial interest in the outcome of their decision, I confine my dissent to the issue of whether an agricultural exemption was legal in this case.
The Co-op sought an exemption for this building only after construction was already underway. The building is over one hundred yards long and twenty feet high and houses a quarter of a million bushels of corn. It is located on a six-acre parcel of property outside the city, directly across from the plaintiffs’ residence. The Co-op also operates a lumber yard, sells fertilizer chemicals, seed and feed. It also stores corn for its own operation and for farmers. It plans to use the structure in question for storing corn in the building for a number of years, and then use it as a machine shed.
This use is not for agricultural purposes. It is unlike a storage facility owned by a farmer to accommodate his agricultural operation. See Farmegg Products, Inc. v. Humboldt County, 190 N.W.2d 454, 459 (Iowa 1971). The Co-op is engaged in doing business with farmers rather than farming. They are not unlike the local farm implement store. The use of this building is closer to the use of a grain barge on the Mississippi River than the use of “the usual agricultural building” in this zoning district.
The purpose of zoning regulations is to protect the general well-being of others by prohibiting uses that would be injurious to others. Plaintiffs had a right to expect *353that the adjoining property could be used for agricultural purposes. They should not be required to have their view destroyed by this massive commercial building and be subjected to the loading and unloading of this huge quantity of grain. In allowing this, the board acted illegally.
CARTER and SNELL, JJ., join this dissent.