After being denied their request to expand operations into the winter months, the owners of a wellness retreat in Wapiti have appealed the decision to Park County Fifth District Court.

Mike and Taylor Gimmeson submitted the petition Oct. 25, a little more than a month after commissioners narrowly voted against an amendment to their previously approved special use permit.

Pure Heart Retreat includes a yoga studio and short term rentals, housed in geodesic domes. The Gimmesons are asking the court to find whether the decision not to allow full-year operations was legal, as well as whether they are allowed to apply wildlife habitat regulations to the decision on the SUP.

The Gimmeson’s case was noted by opponents of the proposed new Park County Land Use Plan in regards to the proposed addition of a big game overlay worked out with Wyoming Game and Fish. Commissioners have said the new overlay would be included as guidance, not as regulation, however.

The appeal also asks whether the board’s finding that the use would be incompatible and unharmonious with the neighborhood if operated in the winter and early spring months would be arbitrary and capricious.

The neighbors’ objections were the primary reasons at least one of the three commissioners who voted against the amended SUP, Lee Livingston, made his decision. He said he wouldn’t base it off a G&F decision but that, since the initial SUP was approved over the objections of at least some of the neighbors, the applicants should live with what they initially agreed to.

Last summer Mike Gimmeson, the property owner, had been approved to construct five geodesic domes on his Green Creek property for operation May 1-Nov. 14.

The commissioners approved the SUP with the condition, recommended by Game and Fish, to not allow operation in the winter months to protect mule deer habitat.

Since then, according to county planner Kim Dillivan, a Game and Fish official had gone to the property and revised his original determination by saying it would only be needing to halt operations for March-April.

If that motion had been approved, it still wouldn’t have been all of what the Gimmesons wanted, as Taylor Gimmeson said a two month gap in yoga classes would be an issue. She said they had interest from not just other yoga instructors but a massage therapist and local martial arts instructors to use the space, especially during the winter months, she said, when there’s little going on in the Wapiti Valley.

She said multiple area residents had expressed interest in going to winter classes.

However, a number of residents in the Green Creek area objected to the amended SUP — as some had objected to the initial SUP — for a few reasons, including to protect wildlife habitat and because the domes are more visible than they had thought they initially would be.