Buc-ee’s Appeals — and the Question Lands with the Commissioners

Having failed to get a quiet “yes,” Buc-ee’s is taking its convenience-store claim to the elected Board of County Commissioners. Its appeal argues the county’s code, read literally, makes a 74,000-square-foot travel plaza a “convenience store” — and that the board, as the code’s “ultimate interpreter,” should say so. The administrative shortcut has, by the company’s own hand, become the public hearing it was built to avoid.

On July 2nd Buc-ee’s EPCO, LLC appealed to the El Paso County Board of County Commissioners, asking the elected board to overturn the planning director’s July 1st ruling that the county “cannot determine” whether the proposed Monument Hill travel plaza is a “convenience store.” The appeal — county file APP261, filed July 2nd with fees paid July 6th — invokes Section 2.2.1.H of the Land Development Code, which names the commissioners “the ultimate interpreter of the meaning and application” of the code, and asks them to resolve the question the director would not.

It is a substantial filing — 298 pages in all. The appeal letter itself is short; it incorporates by reference Buc-ee’s original administrative-determination application — its roughly ten-page convenience-store argument and five exhibits — and it is that underlying application that supplies most of the substance summarized here. It was prepared by Vertex Consulting Services — the firm of Nina Dossey and Craig Dossey, the county’s former planning and community development director. The same firm filed the boundary-line adjustment that reshaped the Buc-ee’s parcel this spring and represents a separate, contested rezoning at Highway 83 and Walker Road.

What the appeal changes is the venue. The administrative determination Buc-ee’s chose in June was the low-visibility path: a written ruling by one official, no hearing, no public notice, no vote. By appealing, the company sends the same question to the elected board — and, for the first time in this process, into a public hearing where residents may be heard. The narrow legal question is unchanged: not whether Buc-ee’s should be built, but whether it is an allowed “convenience store,” or a use similar enough to one, in the parcel’s C-1 zoning. Even a win would clear only that hurdle, not authorize construction.

The stakes of the label are stark, because the county’s own use table for C-1 lists “convenience store” as an allowed use but does not list “gas station” or “truck stop” at all — meaning neither may be built in the zone. So the question is close to all-or-nothing: a convenience store (in which fuel sales are expressly permitted) is allowed; a fuel-first operation the code would call something else is not.

What happens next

• It goes to the elected board. The appeal is decided by the Board of County Commissioners, not by planning staff.
• A public hearing will be set. Expect a published agenda, a staff presentation, Buc-ee’s presentation, public comment, commissioner discussion, and a formal vote — the first point in this process at which the public can weigh in.
• The board answers one legal question: is the proposed use an allowed “convenience store,” or a use “sufficiently similar” to one, in C-1? A “yes” settles only the zoning classification.
• Three ways it can go: the board can (A) rule it is a convenience store, sending the project on to administrative site-development review; (B) uphold the director and decline to classify it, stalling the C-1 route; or (C) find it requires a discretionary approval — a rezoning, special-use permit, or PUD — which would trigger a longer public review of its own.
• A win is not the finish line. The project would still need a site-development plan, grading and drainage, traffic engineering, utilities, access and CDOT permits, a water-adequacy finding, and building permits.
• A loss leaves options: Buc-ee’s could seek review in district court, redesign, pursue a rezoning, or abandon the site.
• Timeline: the appeal (file APP261) was filed July 2nd, within the 30-day window; a hearing date has not been set. Watch the commissioners’ agenda and county files ADM264 and APP261.

The case Buc-ee’s makes

The appeal argues, first and foremost, that the code must be “read literally” (Section 1.6.1), and that read literally the project is a convenience store. It sells the goods the definition enumerates — groceries, ready-to-eat food, over-the-counter drugs and sundries — and the same definition provides that a convenience store “may include retail sale of gasoline.” Fuel, the company says, is therefore part of the one use, not a separate one.

To the county’s sticking point — that the definition serves “the neighborhood in which it is located” — Buc-ee’s turns to the code’s own definition of “neighborhood,” which speaks of areas unified by “functional connections” and “shared facilities and public spaces.” Interstate 25, County Line Road and Beacon Lite Road, it argues, are exactly such functional connections, so a store on the corridor still serves the neighborhood; it points to other convenience stores sited at interchanges and along arterials (Exhibit A).

Its structural argument is that the code sets no size limit on a convenience store. Where the code means to cap a use by scale it does so expressly — a bed-and-breakfast stay is capped at 30 days, accessory living quarters at 1,500 square feet — but “convenience store” carries no square-footage, pump-count, or volume ceiling. Intensity, the appeal says, is governed by dimensional standards such as setbacks, parking and landscaping, not by rewriting the use; and the project meets those standards (Exhibit E, the site-development plan). It is not a gas station, the company adds, because a gas station is an automotive-service use — repairs, accessory installation, vehicle washing — and Buc-ee’s does none of that; nor a truck stop, because it bans 18-wheelers and offers no showers, lodging or overnight parking.

Alternatively, the appeal argues the project is a “similar permitted use” under Section 5.3.6.C. C-1’s purpose is broadly “providing for commercial activities,” and Buc-ee’s, it says, is comparable to — and less intense than — uses the district already allows by right, a list it fills with pointed examples: IKEA, Bass Pro Shops, a King Soopers Marketplace, Great Wolf Lodge, the Broadmoor World Arena, the Pikes Peak Center. A trip-generation memorandum (Exhibit C) contends the plaza would generate fewer peak-hour trips than a theater, a big-box store, or a supercenter built on the same lot, and that its traffic can be mitigated by a roundabout and turn lanes (Exhibits D and E). The filing also dresses the project in community benefits offered as “shared facilities”: a bicycle plaza and repair station, roughly 20 EV chargers, open space covering about 35% of the site against a 5% requirement, CDOT-recommended wildlife mitigation, 24-hour backup power billed as a “community refuge,” an emergency-staging area for the fire district, and fire-water upgrades.

The counterpoints

The appeal’s weakest link is the one it works hardest to wave away: scale. Land-use law has long held that at some point a difference in size becomes a difference in kind. Picture a corner coffee shop; now picture a 120,000-square-foot coffee shop drawing ten thousand cars a day. Both sell coffee, but only one reorders the roads, the parking and the neighborhood around it. That is the county’s strongest substantive argument — that this project is not merely a larger convenience store but a categorically different land use — and it has textual support: the “similar use” test the appeal itself invokes directs the county to weigh a use’s “character, descriptor, and intensity,” which makes scale legally relevant, not incidental.

Historical practice points the same way, and the director leaned on it. Her determination rested expressly on a review of the county’s past approvals and a comparative analysis — and the record she assembled is lopsided. The staff survey attached to the ruling catalogs 26 gas-station and convenience-store approvals across the county: the largest is about 5,550 square feet, pump counts run from four to 18, and not one sits in a C-1 district. Where a typical approved store might run on the order of 3,500 square feet, eight fuel pumps and forty parking spaces, Buc-ee’s proposes roughly 74,000 square feet, 120 fueling positions and about 790 parking spaces — some thirteen to fifteen times the size of the biggest the county has ever cleared. The convenience-store industry draws the line in the same place: NACS, its trade association, caps its largest recognized format, the “hyper convenience store,” at 4,000 to 5,000 square feet. On that record, staff can argue, the proposal simply falls outside the established meaning of the term.

The comparison Buc-ee’s draws also elides where those uses sit. The by-right examples it cites — IKEA, a King Soopers Marketplace, Great Wolf Lodge, the Broadmoor World Arena, the Pikes Peak Center — are creatures of dense commercial corridors and downtowns. None is dropped onto rural Monument Hill, ringed by large-lot homes and set against the conserved Greenland landscape — the protected open space and big-game corridor that the new $15m I-25 wildlife overpass, about two miles north, was built to stitch back together. A 74,000-square-foot, 120-position travel plaza at that edge raises a question of compatibility, not merely square footage.

The “neighborhood” argument invites similar scrutiny. The code’s definition opens with “primarily residential areas”; reading it to convert an interstate interchange into a neighborhood is a stretch the board will have to accept or reject. And because a gas station is not a permitted C-1 use at all, the real question is not the store’s branding but its function: is this a store that happens to sell fuel, or a fuel operation with a large store attached? Finally, opponents will argue that stretching a definition to fit a project of this size does not interpret the C-1 district so much as rewrite it — and C-1 has been closed to new zoning since 1991, an “obsolete” district the county has chosen not to expand.

The community-benefits framing sits awkwardly against the record, too. The “neighborhood” Buc-ee’s says it would serve has, so far, answered almost entirely in opposition — of the more than 80 residents who wrote to the county, this newspaper found none in favor. And several of the amenities read as though drawn for a different place: a “community bicycle plaza” with a repair station, offered at a six-lane interstate interchange ringed by large-lot rural homes and protected open space, is of little use to anyone likely to bike to it. The gestures meant to make the plaza neighborly may instead underscore how poorly it fits the neighborhood it has chosen.

Opponents go a step further. In an analysis circulated by Tri-Lakes Preservation, the group argues the convenience-store bid is one move in a “piecemeal” strategy — the administrative determination, the boundary-line adjustment, and the decision to build on only the C-1 portion of the site — designed to sidestep the rezoning, Master-Plan review, 300-year water finding, and public hearings the county told Buc-ee’s it would need when the company first came through “early assistance” in 2024. It is an advocacy document, not a neutral one, but it frames the throughline the board will hear: whether a use classification is being used to avoid the reviews a project this size would otherwise trigger.

Our analysis

This is a genuine contest of statutory interpretation, and both sides hold real cards. Buc-ee’s has the cleaner textual argument: the code names “convenience store” as an allowed C-1 use, sets no size limit, and instructs that its words be read literally. The county has the stronger planning argument: land-use law routinely turns on a project’s function and intensity, not the label an applicant prefers, and both the county’s own approval history and the industry’s own definitions put a convenience store an order of magnitude smaller than this.

The question the board cannot avoid is the one neither side answers cleanly: where is the limiting principle? If a 74,000-square-foot plaza with 120 fueling positions is a convenience store, what would not be? And if size is decisive, at what square footage or pump count does a convenience store become something else? The most consequential voice in the room may not be a commissioner’s but the county attorney’s — specifically, whether classifying this project as a convenience store interprets the code or effectively amends it without the legislative process that would require. For the record, this board has not denied a developer rezoning or subdivision in roughly four and a half years.

The irony sits atop all of it. The administrative route was chosen to settle the matter quietly, without a public vote. The appeal Buc-ee’s has now filed delivers the opposite: a public hearing, before the elected board, on the very question the shortcut was meant to keep from one.

Weigh in — the appeal now has a public forum

Unlike the administrative determination, the appeal will be decided at a public Board of County Commissioners hearing that takes public comment.

• Board of County Commissioners — reach all five commissioners through Citizen Connect; board office, 200 S. Cascade Ave., Suite 150, Colorado Springs.
• Watch for the hearing date — the appeal is county file APP261 (of determination ADM264); the agenda and file are on the county portal. The county names Kylie Bagley as the coordinating contact.
• Planning & Community Development — write the Planner of the Day at [email protected], referencing ADM264/APP261.

Sources

• Buc-ee’s EPCO, LLC, **appeal of Administrative Determination ADM264 to the Board of County Commissioners** — county file APP261, filed July 2, 2026 (fees paid July 6); prepared by Vertex Consulting Services; with Exhibit A (convenience-store examples), Exhibit B (site composition plan), Exhibit C (trip-generation memorandum), Exhibit D (traffic impact analysis) and Exhibit E (site development plan).
• El Paso County Planning & Community Development, ADM264 determination letter (July 1, 2026) and its Exhibit 1 (county survey of 26 gas-station/convenience-store approvals) and Exhibit 2 (C-1 use table); outcome summarized on the county’s Buc-ee’s Update page.
• El Paso County EDARP: ADM264 (determination) and APP261 (appeal); EXBL261 (boundary-line adjustment).
• El Paso County Land Development Code, §§2.2.1, 2.2.4, 5.3.6, 1.15 (definitions) and 4.4.1 (C-1, obsolete).
• NACS, “What Is a Convenience Store?” — store-format size definitions.
• Tri-Lakes Preservation, “Why a Convenience Store?” (analysis, opposition) and its Buc-ee’s page; Integrity Matters.
• The Monument Independent: “Buc-ee’s tries the back door”; “Is a Buc-ee’s a ‘convenience store’? The county says it cannot tell”; “Eighty-plus objections to Buc-ee’s, filed ‘for reference only'” (internal links — no UTM).