A unique tent-like structure that was originally owned by Kanye West is set to rise again in Cody, but without the rapper’s involvement and with some upgrades.

The Cody Planning and Zoning Board required West’s building to be dismantled in 2022, but last month, members approved the current owners’ request to reassemble the gable steel structure. The current board was swayed by GordonJosh LLC’s plans to spruce up the property.

Josh and Gordon Allison intend to put a new metal corrugated facade on the front of the building, cover the mechanical equipment with wooden screens, install a glass garage door, add trees along the east and west boundaries of the property, pave the entryway and add rocks and shrubbery to the highway frontage.

Speaking on behalf of the Allisons, Cody attorney Sarah Miles said the owners want to make the property look nice and more presentable.

“They are willing to, I guess, ‘level up’ the landscaping for the entirety of the property,” Miles said at the May 21 meeting.

Planning and Zoning Board Chairman Dan Schein was complimentary of the plans, saying they represented “a definite improvement in the area.” The board voted unanimously to approve GordonJosh’s commercial site plan and 5-1 to approve its architectural and landscape plan.

(Miles is also a member of the planning board but recused herself from the board’s votes on the subject.)

‘So out of place’

The lone member to vote against the landscape plan was Carla Egelhoff. She expressed appreciation for the planned trees and improved driveway, but said the building “is not compatible with the Cody, Wyoming, appearance.”

When the structure was initially put up, “I never heard a good word about it,” Egelhoff said, “because it was not attractive, and it didn’t fit, and it was so out of place because it was so different.”

She noted that the city eventually forced the building to be removed.

​​“I object to the idea that now we’re being asked to approve put[ting] it back up, and it doesn’t look very much different than it did before,” Egelhoff said.

However, board member Erin Welty said opinions about West may have shaped the public’s initial views about the structure.

“At the time this building was originally constructed, I lived over 3,000 miles from here,” Welty said, “and I was aware that everything that the previous owner touched was looked upon poorly simply because of who that person was.”

Kanye’s time in Cody

West purchased the commercial property and other nearby parcels in 2019, after he’d made the former Monster Lake Ranch south of Cody his part-time home. The musician and fashion designer spent time working out of a more traditional steel building on the southwest corner of the Big Horn Avenue property and got city permission to temporarily set up the 4,800 square foot metal-and-fabric building.

When West pulled out of Cody in 2022, he sold the 3.76-acre property and the temporary structure to the Allisons. The new owners asked the city to let them keep using the unique building, but took it down when the board said no.

The Allisons now plan to reinstall the structure on the same concrete pad and use it for storage. (The steel “Kanye building,” meanwhile, currently hosts the Wallace Family RV repair and rental business.)

Caring for the corridor

In opposing the resurrection of the fabric-and-mental building, Egelhoff noted that the property is along Cody’s entryway from the Powell Highway; she said the corridor “needs to be treated with extra care.”

However, Welty said the property was already one of the better-looking lots along Big Horn Avenue. Schein agreed, saying that when the spruced up design is compared to similar-looking quonset huts along the highway, it is “by far one of the more attractive in that group.” He described the Allisons’ enhancements as “a step in the right direction” for the corridor.

Welty also said constructing an entirely new building would be “extremely expensive … and an undue burden on the property owner.”

As for West, the former owner, he hasn’t been visible in Cody in recent years, but he continues to own his ranch south of the city.