The Comment I Filed on the Buc-ee’s Appeal

I filed the following comment with the El Paso County Board of County Commissioners this morning, ahead of Thursday’s hearing on Buc-ee’s appeal. I filed it as a resident of Monument, in my own name and on my own behalf — not for this newspaper, which takes no institutional position on the appeal. It is printed here in full, exactly as submitted, so readers can weigh the argument themselves and see what the commissioners will see.

Statement of capacity

This comment is submitted by Michael Christensen solely in an individual and personal capacity as a resident of El Paso County. The undersigned is the editor of The Monument Independent; that fact is stated here for disclosure only. This comment is not submitted on behalf of that publication, does not represent an institutional position of any newspaper, and should not be construed as one. The analysis and conclusions are the undersigned’s own.

Statement of scope and requested disposition

The County has stated that the hearing will decide “one question: whether the proposed Buc-ee’s use qualifies as an allowed use in the C-1 zoning district under the Land Development Code,” and that the appeal “is limited to a single issue: whether the proposed Buc-ee’s use is an allowed use in the C-1 zoning district or is similar enough to be an allowed use to be considered as such.” The hearing “does not approve or deny construction,” and does not reach site design, grading, drainage, traffic improvements, utilities, signage, lighting, or building permits. El Paso Cnty. Planning & Cmty. Dev., Buc-ee’s Update (updated Aug. 10, 2026). The Notice of Public Hearing describes the matter identically: an appeal of the Director’s determination “that it is unclear if Buc-ee’s meets the definition of a ‘Convenience Store’ as defined in Section 1.15 of the El Paso County Land Development Code and whether it is sufficiently similar to allowed uses in the C-1 zone district.” Notice of Public Hearing, APP261 (mailed Aug. 12, 2026).

This comment is confined to that question. It does not ask the Board to weigh the project’s merits or economics, and it does not address matters reserved to development review.

Every factual assertion below is drawn from the applicant’s own June 19, 2026 Request for Administrative Determination and its Exhibits A through E, from the Director’s July 1, 2026 determination and its exhibits, or from the text of the Land Development Code.

The Board should deny APP261 and leave the determination in ADM264 undisturbed.

I. The Code prescribes two inquiries and supplies the criteria for each

The Director described the analysis in two steps: whether the proposal falls within an existing defined use category, and if not, whether it is sufficiently similar to uses permitted in the district under established criteria. Determination Letter 2.

The similar-use criteria are conjunctive. An unlisted use may be allowed only where “[t]he function, performance characteristics, and location requirements of the unlisted use shall be consistent with the purpose and description of the zoning district where it is proposed,” and “[t]he unlisted use is compatible with the uses specifically allowed in the district, and similar in characteristics such as traffic and parking generation, noise, glare, vibration, and dust.” LDC § 5.3.6(C)(1).

Section 1.6.7 supplies the companion rule: “When a use is expressly defined in this Code, or when a use is categorized by an administrative determination, similar uses which are not listed or defined shall fall within the same category of use by character, descriptor, and intensity.” Intensity is part of the Code’s own test, not an extrinsic consideration. The applicant invokes § 1.6.7 as an alternative basis for its request. Request 1.

Three provisions bound what an interpretation may accomplish. An administrative determination “shall have the same effect as any provision of this Code.” LDC § 5.3.6(B). Written interpretations “set no precedent and shall be limited to the property identified in the interpretation unless determined to apply to an entire category of land,” and the Director “shall also determine whether an amendment to this Code to include the similar use is appropriate.” LDC § 5.3.6(C)(3). And “[n]o interpretation shall allow the establishment of any use inconsistent with the statement of purpose for the zoning district … and no interpretation shall have the effect of amending, abrogating, or waiving any other standard or requirement established by Code.” LDC § 5.3.6(E).

The Board may use § 5.3.6 to recognize a genuinely similar unlisted use; a use’s absence from Table 5-1 does not by itself end the inquiry. But it may reach that result only by applying both criteria and making an affirmative, record-supported finding on each.

In a use-classification appeal reviewed under C.R.C.P. 106(a)(4), the Colorado Supreme Court held that a board deciding such a question must apply the classification criteria its own code supplies, and that doing so was “not only proper but also … mandated by the Code.” Langer v. Board of County Commissioners, 2020 CO 31, ¶¶ 18–19, 23. Here those criteria are LDC §§ 1.6.7 and 5.3.6(C)(1). Considering intensity therefore does not invent a numerical limit; it applies the Code as written.

Langer states the limit on that authority in both directions. A board may not “rewrite the definition,” because “[w]e do not add words to a statute or subtract words from it.” Id. ¶ 31 (quoting People v. Cali, 2020 CO 20, ¶ 17, 459 P.3d 516, 519). Nor may it presume that those who enacted the language “used language idly and with no intent that meaning should be given to the language used.” Id. (citing Lombard v. Colo. Outdoor Educ. Ctr., Inc., 187 P.3d 565, 571 (Colo. 2008)). That principle forecloses reading a pump cap into the Convenience Store definition. It equally forecloses reading the definition’s market-orientation clause out of it.

This comment does not ask the Board to apply a canon under which the more restrictive of two overlapping classifications governs. Langer declined to adopt such a rule. Id. ¶¶ 32–34.

II. The proposal has not been shown to meet the defined Convenience Store use

A. The neighborhood-serving clause must be given effect

The Code defines Convenience Store as “[a]n establishment for the purpose of offering for sale to the neighborhood in which it is located such items as groceries, ready to eat food, over the counter drugs, and sundries. A convenience store may include retail sale of gasoline and other petroleum products.” LDC § 1.15 (emphasis added).

Two interpretive rules apply, and they point in different directions. The Code requires literal reading, and definitions “define the limits of specific uses and other standards.” LDC §§ 1.6.1, 1.14.7. But the Code also provides that “lists of items or examples that use ‘including,’ ‘such as,’ or similar terms are intended to provide examples only,” and “are not to be construed as exhaustive lists of all possibilities.” LDC § 1.6.3.

The merchandise list is therefore illustrative, and nothing turns on which enumerated goods are stocked. What remains operative is the clause preceding it. The Director identified that clause as the source of the difficulty: the definition “includes the phrase ‘for the purpose of offering for sale to the neighborhood in which it is located’, making it difficult to determine the use classification.” Determination Letter 3.

The Code does not leave the term undefined. “Neighborhoods — Primarily residential areas unified by shared characteristics, functional connections and spatial perceptions. Elements which define or reinforce a neighborhood orientation include common design themes, pedestrian and bicycle linkages, shared facilities and public spaces and identifiable boundaries, edges or gateways.” LDC § 1.15. Because “the singular shall include the plural; and the plural the singular,” LDC § 1.14.2, that definition informs “neighborhood” as used in the Convenience Store definition.

The applicant reads “functional connections” to encompass “Interstate 25, County Line Road, and Beacon Lite Road.” Request 3. Every other element the Code supplies is local and community-scale — common design themes, pedestrian and bicycle linkages, shared facilities and public spaces, identifiable boundaries, edges, gateways. Under the applicant’s reading, any parcel adjacent to an interchange in unincorporated El Paso County is a “neighborhood” for purposes of § 1.15, and the clause does no work. Under Langer, the Board may not read it out. 2020 CO 31, ¶ 31.

B. The applicant’s own traffic study models a market that is not the neighborhood

The applicant’s Exhibit D states: “User specific sales transactions indicate that more than 85 percent of customers are not located local to other Buc-ee’s sites which indicates a high percentage of diverted link trips from the freeway interchanges.” Request Ex. D, Traffic Impact Study 19. The study applies “[a] diverted link rate of 85 percent.” Id. at 18.

The study’s weighted-average trip distribution allocates the project’s traffic as follows:

Request Ex. D, Traffic Impact Study 19.

Interstate 25 accounts for 93.25 percent. All four local roadway approaches combined account for 6.75 percent.

These are forecasts, and they draw on data from fifteen existing Buc-ee’s locations rather than on observed origins for an unbuilt Colorado facility. Id. at 18. The Board should treat them as forecasts. But they are the applicant’s own stated basis for modeling this project, prepared by its own engineers, and the applicant should be required to reconcile them with a definition centered on offering goods “to the neighborhood in which it is located.” A facility whose own traffic model assigns 6.75 percent of its trips to every local road combined has not been shown to exist for the purpose of serving the neighborhood in which it sits.

The applicant’s earlier filing with this County is consistent. Early-assistance file EA2461 — the same early-assistance number carried on both ADM264 and APP261 — is titled “Beacon Lite Road Travel Center” and describes a “73,372 SF Travel Center.” Section 1.6.7 makes a use’s descriptor part of the classification test.

III. The site-composition ratio does not establish that fuel sales are subordinate

The applicant states that “approximately 92% of the relevant site area is dedicated to the convenience retail building and associated parking, while only approximately 8% is devoted to fuel sales,” and that “more than 60% of projected revenue is expected to derive from in-store retail and food sales.” Request 6 & Ex. B.

Neither figure resolves the classification question, and the first does not survive comparison with the applicant’s own site plan.

First, revenue share is not a criterion. Neither § 5.3.6(C)(1) nor § 1.6.7 identifies revenue as a classification factor. And by the applicant’s own statement, up to approximately 40 percent of projected revenue is attributable to fuel.

Second, the 92/8 ratio rests on a restricted denominator. The applicant’s own footnote explains that “[t]he remaining site area includes the detention pond, utilities, open space areas, and landscape buffers which are not associated with any particular use.” Request 6 n.3. The ratio is therefore computed on a “relevant site area” that excludes roughly a third of the parcel.

Third, and most directly, the applicant’s own Site Development Plan states the coverage figures, and they do not describe a subordinate fueling operation. The Site Summary Table on Exhibit E reports a total parcel area of ± 30.8 acres and gives the following Lot Area Coverage Calculation:

Request Ex. E, Site Development Plan, Cover Sheet (Apr. 29, 2026). Exhibit B corroborates the canopy figure, labeling two fuel-canopy areas of 31,110.65 square feet and 31,110.96 square feet.

By the applicant’s own measurements, the fuel canopies cover 1.4 acres against a 1.7-acre building — roughly 82 percent of the building’s footprint. The 92/8 ratio is reached not by comparing the two structures, but by assigning all 14.4 acres of pavement to the convenience-retail side of the ledger. That pavement serves a facility with 120 fueling positions. A ratio that counts fueling-driven circulation and parking as evidence that fueling is subordinate does not measure what the Code asks about.

The Code’s own definitions confirm that the inquiry is functional. A “Principal Use” is “[a]n activity or combination of activities of chief importance on the lot or parcel,” and “[t]he main purposes for which the land is intended, designed, or ordinarily used.” Determination Letter 3. And the Code permits a commercial parcel to carry more than one: “Only one principal use is allowed per lot or parcel, except in the A-35 zoning district and in commercial and industrial zoning districts where more than one principal use may be established subject to the requirements and limitations of this Code.” LDC § 5.1.2.

The applicant argues the project is “a single principal Convenience Store use” and that the Code “provides no basis to sever the fueling component.” Request 6–7. But § 5.1.2 means the question cannot be resolved by the retail building’s prominence alone. If the integrated operation comprises both a Convenience Store and a Gas Station as principal uses, both must be allowed in C-1. Table 5-1 does not allow Gas Station in C-1.

IV. The County’s record and the applicant’s own benchmark both show a difference of magnitude

A. The County’s comparison set

Exhibit 1 to the determination compiles 26 convenience-store and gas-station records staff identified in EDARP and Assessor data. It does not purport to catalogue every facility the County has approved, and nine of its 26 rows are marked as having no record of original approval. It is nevertheless the County’s own comparison set, assembled for this determination.

Within it, the largest convenience-store floor area is 5,550 square feet (Maverick, 2477 Peterson Road, CC district, 2017, twelve gas pumps on 6.76 acres); the highest listed gas-pump count is 18 (King Soopers, 7595 Falcon Market Place, CR district, 2023, with no convenience-store floor area); and, as the Director states, “there are no previous convenience store approvals within the C-1 zoning district on record.” Determination Letter 3–4 & Ex. 1.

The proposed 74,000-square-foot building is approximately thirteen times the largest convenience-store floor area in that record. On fueling, Exhibit 1 records “# Gas Pumps” while the applicant describes 60 multi-product dispensers providing 120 fueling positions; because the County’s convention is not stated in the exhibit, pump-count ratios against Exhibit 1 should not be presented as though the units were identical.

B. The applicant’s own convenience-store benchmark

That unit problem does not arise in the applicant’s own submission, because Exhibit C uses the same unit for both. Appendix A to the Trip Generation Memorandum includes, within the supercenter composite, a conventional industry benchmark for the very use category at issue:

Request Ex. C, Trip Generation Memorandum, App’x A.

Measured against the applicant’s own selected benchmark for a convenience store with gas station, the proposal is 14.8 times the building area, 7.5 times the fueling positions, and 6.9 times the daily trips. Both figures are stated in fueling positions in the applicant’s own table, so the comparison is like-for-like.

The applicant’s traffic engineers also explain why they did not model the project from that category: trip estimates were instead “developed using actual trip data information from other Buc-ee’s sites,” drawn from “15 Buc-ee’s sites with operational histories of at least two-years.” Request Ex. D, Traffic Impact Study 18.

Size alone is not dispositive, and the Code contains no square-footage ceiling. But a difference of this order — against both the County’s approval history and the applicant’s own industry benchmark — is directly probative of “character, descriptor, and intensity” under § 1.6.7.

V. Neither similar-use criterion has been satisfied

A. Function, performance characteristics, and location requirements

C-1 is “established for the purpose of providing for commercial activities.” LDC § 4.4.1(A). C-2 is “established for the purpose of providing for large commercial activities.” LDC § 4.4.2(A).

The applicant argues that C-1’s purpose statement is “broad, unqualified” and “imposes no limitation on the scale, type, or customer base,” and contrasts it with the CC, CR, and CS districts, whose purpose statements “expressly identify the consumers those districts are intended to serve.” Request 7 (citing LDC § 3.2.5).

The premise is accurate; the conclusion does not follow. Section 3.2.5 provides:

• CC, Commercial Community District — “intended to accommodate retail sales and service establishments that generally require freestanding or small center type buildings and that primarily serve adjoining neighborhoods.”
• CR, Commercial Regional District — “intended to accommodate regional centers providing ease of pedestrian and vehicular circulation, unity of architectural design, and best serving the convenience of the public and aesthetic enhancement of the community and region.”
• CS, Commercial Services District — “intended to accommodate retail, wholesale or service commercial uses that serve the general public.”

The applicant is correct that the Code assigns consumer orientation by district. That is precisely the difficulty. The Code has a district for neighborhood-serving commercial, a district for regional centers, and a district for uses serving the general public — and Gas Station is an allowed use in all three, as well as in C-2 and M. A use whose own engineers assign 93.25 percent of its trips to an interstate is regionally oriented, and the Code identifies the district intended to accommodate regional centers. It is CR, not C-1.

If C-1’s purpose statement is genuinely contentless, it cannot supply the affirmative consistency finding § 5.3.6(C)(1) requires either. The criterion asks whether the use is consistent with the district’s “purpose and description.” Where the purpose clause is general, the description is furnished by the Code’s structure — including which uses Table 5-1 places in the district and which it withholds.

The district’s dimensional standards point the same way. C-1 carries a maximum building height of 30 feet, the lowest of any commercial district in the County; the comparable figures are 40 feet in CC, 45 feet in CR and CS, and 50 feet in C-2. LDC Table 5-5. The Code’s Compatibility definition expressly identifies “height, scale, mass and bulk of structures” among the characteristics that affect compatibility. LDC § 1.15.

As to location requirements, the applicant’s own traffic study proposes that “the County Line Road and Beacon Lite Road intersection … be realigned as part of project development,” Request Ex. D, Traffic Impact Study 20, and the applicant submitted a Minor Interchange Modification Request to the Federal Highway Administration’s Colorado Division. The existence of a federal interchange process does not itself establish that a use is forbidden in C-1, and this comment does not contend otherwise. It does establish that interstate access and ramp-terminal operations are material location requirements of this proposal — requirements no use listed as allowed in C-1 carries.

B. Traffic and parking generation, noise, glare, vibration, and dust

The applicant compares the project not to allowed C-1 uses as built, but to three hypothetical maximum buildouts of the parcel: a general-retail composite modeled on The Promenade Shops at Briargate (305,000 square feet), a supercenter composite anchored by “a Super Walmart or similar retail use” (200,000 square feet plus outparcels), and a 9,000-seat theater/concert venue scaled from Ford Amphitheater. Request Ex. C, Trip Generation Memorandum 1–3.

Section 5.3.6(C)(1) asks whether this use is similar to uses the district allows. It does not ask whether some larger imaginable combination of permitted uses could generate more traffic. If a sufficiently large hypothetical could validate any unlisted use, the criterion would impose no limit at all.

The comparison also does not say what the applicant’s letter says it says. The Trip Generation Memorandum’s own summary table reports:

Request Ex. C, App’x A (“Net Difference in Trips — Various Land Uses vs Buc-ee’s El Paso County”). A positive figure denotes trips the proposal generates in excess of the comparison scenario.

By the applicant’s own table, the proposal generates 1,338 more daily trips than the supercenter scenario and 11,786 more than the theater scenario. The memorandum nonetheless concludes that “a permitted supercenter development would impose slightly greater overall traffic demand on the surrounding roadway network,” Request Ex. C at 3, and describes the proposal’s daily volume as “within approximately 94% of the supercenter scenario,” id. at 2 — a characterization that inverts the relationship its own table reports. The supercenter’s higher figures are confined to the peak hours: 35 more AM trips and 84 more PM trips, differences of roughly 3 and 5 percent.

The applicant is entitled to argue that the PM peak hour is the controlling measure for intersection design, and it does so. Request 9. But the Board should identify which metric it is relying on before accepting a conclusion of comparable “overall traffic demand,” because on daily volume the applicant’s own analysis places the proposal above two of its three chosen comparators.

The criterion also names parking generation, noise, glare, vibration, and dust. A trip-comparison table does not address them. Nor do assurances that a later site plan will comply with applicable standards. Compliance with separate development standards under § 5.3.6(C)(5) — which the applicant invokes, Request 10 & n.4 — is a different question from whether the use is similar to specifically allowed C-1 uses under § 5.3.6(C)(1). Satisfying the former does not establish the latter.

C. Compatibility

The Code defines Compatibility as “[t]he characteristics of different uses, activities or designs which allow them to be located near or adjacent to each other in harmony,” identifies height, scale, mass, bulk, landscaping, lighting, noise, odor, and architecture among the relevant characteristics, and clarifies that compatibility “does not mean ‘the same as.'” LDC § 1.15.

The Board need not decide design compliance at this hearing. It should determine whether the record supplies a like-for-like comparison against specifically allowed C-1 uses on the factors § 5.3.6(C)(1) names. On this record, the similar-use showing rests on maximum-buildout traffic hypotheticals and on assurances of future compliance. An affirmative similarity finding would lack a stated factual bridge from the project’s actual characteristics to both required criteria.

VI. The use table’s treatment of fuel-retail uses is structural evidence

Table 5-1 allows Convenience Store in CC, CR, CS, C-1, C-2, and M. It allows Gas Station in CC, CR, CS, C-2, and M — but not in C-1. Truck Stop and Fuel Sales and Storage are likewise not listed for C-1. LDC Table 5-1; accord Determination Letter Ex. 2. The applicant acknowledges the first half of this, noting that Convenience Store is allowed “in the CC, CR, CS, C-1, C-2, and M zoning districts.” Request 5.

C-1 is the only district in the County where the Code permits a convenience store and withholds a gas station. In every other district where one is allowed, both are.

The Code states what a blank cell means: “If no symbol appears in the box at the intersection of the column and the row, the use is not allowed as a principal use in that zoning district.” LDC § 5.1.3. The omission is not a gap for interpretation to fill; by the Code’s own instruction for reading its use table, it is the operative rule. Section 1.6.6 confirms it: “The listing of any use as being permitted in a particular zoning district shall be deemed to be an exclusion of the use from any other zoning district in which the use is not listed.” Accord LDC § 5.3.6(C)(2).

The separately defined general “Store” use makes the same distinction from the other direction: it “shall not include adult uses or gasoline filling stations.” Determination Letter 2.

This does not mean any convenience store selling gasoline becomes an impermissible Gas Station. The definition says a convenience store may include fuel sales, and that language must be given effect. But neither may the separate Gas Station category, and its omission from C-1 alone, be rendered meaningless. Under Lombard as applied in Langer, the Board should not presume the drafters used that language idly. 2020 CO 31, ¶ 31.

A related point disposes of the alternative similar-use theory. The applicant lists the C-1 uses it regards as comparable, with its own examples: “Commercial or Retail as Part of Overall Shopping Center (e.g. Falcon Marketplace, Polaris Pointe),” “General Retail Sales (e.g. Bass Pro Shop, IKEA, King Soopers Marketplace),” “Hotel (e.g. Great Wolf Lodge),” “Theater (e.g. Broadmoor World Arena, Pikes Peak Center),” and “Parking Lot (e.g. CDOT Park and Ride).” Request 8–9.

Not one of those uses authorizes the retail sale of gasoline. Among C-1’s allowed principal uses, Convenience Store is the only one whose definition permits it. Section 5.3.6(C)(1) cannot confer through “similarity” a characteristic the proposed comparator is not itself authorized to possess. Otherwise an applicant could import an excluded use by identifying generic features — “customer access, vehicular traffic, on-site parking, internal circulation, lighting,” Request 9 — that it shares with unrelated permitted uses. That is the result § 5.3.6(E) forbids.

Finally, one textual question warrants an answer on the record. Section 1.6.6 provides that “[f]or uses not listed in any zoning district, an administrative determination concerning whether the use is allowed within the zoning district may be requested.” Gas Station is listed, in five districts. Section 5.3.6(C)(1) is phrased differently, and this comment does not contend the provisions are irreconcilable. But the Board should explain how the pathway described in § 1.6.6 applies to a use the Code lists elsewhere.

VII. The obsolete status of C-1 counsels a text-bound decision

C-1 has been obsolete since 1991. “The C-1, C-2, M, and R-4 zoning districts have been declared to be obsolete pursuant to BoCC Resolution No. 91-59, Land Use 10 as replaced by Resolution 92-46, Land Use-9. No land will be rezoned to an Obsolete Zoning district.” LDC § 4.1.4; see also LDC § 4.4.1(I) (“No land shall be zoned or rezoned to C-1 on or subsequent to May 1, 1991.”).

Obsolete does not mean void, and it does not license reading the district’s uses artificially narrowly. The same provision states that C-1 land “shall remain zoned C-1 and shall be subject to all the provisions of the C-1 district until such time as the land is either rezoned or annexed.” LDC § 4.4.1(I).

It does mean the Code already supplies a transparent mechanism if broader uses should apply to C-1 parcels: “The BoCC may modify the allowed uses, special uses, and development standards within these zoning districts.” LDC § 4.1.4. Section 5.3.6(C)(3) points the same way.

The present fuel-sales sentence entered the Convenience Store definition in the 2007 LDC update — sixteen years after C-1 was closed to new land. Determination Letter 3. It added a permissive sentence. It did not alter the market-orientation clause preceding it. A site-specific interpretation should not perform the work of a legislative amendment without first satisfying the classification criteria the text supplies.

VIII. The Board should state the property to which its ruling attaches

Section 5.3.6(B) provides that “[a] request for an administrative determination shall relate to a specific site, zoning district, use or application,” and § 5.3.6(C)(3) ordinarily limits an interpretation “to the property identified in the interpretation.”

The County’s own records identify the subject property three different ways:

The determination itself describes “a 30+ acre parcel zoned C-1.” Determination Letter 1. County file EXBL261 reflects a 2026 boundary-line adjustment affecting property in this area.

Nothing in this suggests the appeal is invalid. It does make clarification necessary, because the determination will run with identified property and will have the same effect as a Code provision as to that property. LDC § 5.3.6(B). Before ruling, the Board should state on the record the current parcel numbers and legal description its decision governs.

IX. Denial would preserve the Code’s other processes

Denial would not decide whether the project may proceed by another lawful path. The Code provides for a variance of use, rezoning, planned unit development, and legislative amendment of an obsolete district’s allowed uses and standards. LDC §§ 5.3.4, 5.3.5, 4.2.6, 4.1.4. Each produces a decision supported by findings under stated criteria, on a public record.

Nor would classification as an allowed use end County review: “Site development plan approval is required for all development prior to authorization of a building permit.” LDC § 4.4.1(G).

These alternatives are not reasons to deny the appeal, which must be decided on its own criteria. They do show that applying the classification rules as written would not foreclose every version of the project.

Conclusion and requested findings

The Board should deny APP261 and leave the Director’s determination in ADM264 undisturbed. To make the basis of its quasi-judicial decision clear, the Board should make express findings on at least the following:

1. What evidence establishes that the proposed establishment exists “for the purpose of offering for sale to the neighborhood in which it is located,” and how that is reconciled with the applicant’s own statement that more than 85 percent of customers at comparable sites are not local, and with a weighted-average trip distribution assigning 93.25 percent of trips to Interstate 25 and 6.75 percent to all local roads combined.
2. Whether the operation, considered as a whole, shares the character, descriptor, and intensity of the defined Convenience Store use under LDC § 1.6.7 — measured against the County’s own approval record and against the applicant’s own ITE 945 benchmark of 5,000 square feet and 16 fueling positions.
3. Whether fuel sales are subordinate, given that the applicant’s Site Development Plan reports 1.4 acres of fuel canopies against a 1.7-acre building.
4. Whether the use’s function, performance characteristics, and location requirements are consistent with the purpose and description of C-1 under LDC § 5.3.6(C)(1), and how that is reconciled with LDC § 3.2.5, which assigns regional centers to the CR district.
5. Whether the use is compatible with specifically allowed C-1 uses and similar in traffic and parking generation, noise, glare, vibration, and dust — as distinct from being capable of complying with separate development standards under LDC § 5.3.6(C)(5).
6. If the operation includes a principal fuel-sales use under LDC § 5.1.2, how that use is permitted where Table 5-1 shows no symbol for Gas Station in C-1, given LDC §§ 1.6.6, 5.1.3, and 5.3.6(C)(2).
7. How the ruling preserves independent meaning for the separately defined Gas Station use, allowed in five districts and omitted from C-1 alone.
8. Which current parcels and legal description the ruling governs.

On the submitted record, neither the defined-use path nor both criteria of the similar-use path has been established. The appeal should be denied.

Respectfully submitted,

Michael Christensen Monument, Colorado

Authorities and record materials

El Paso County Land Development Code — §§ 1.6.1; 1.6.3; 1.6.6; 1.6.7; 1.14.2; 1.14.7; 1.15 (Convenience Store; Neighborhoods; Compatibility; Gas Station; Truck Stop; Store; Use, Principal; Zoning District, Obsolete); 2.2.4(B)(1), (B)(8); 3.2.5; 4.1.4; 4.2.6; 4.4.1(A), (G), (I); 4.4.2(A); 5.1.2; 5.1.3; 5.3.4; 5.3.5; 5.3.6; Table 5-1; Table 5-5.

County record in this matter — Buc-ee’s EPCO, LLC, Request for Administrative Determination with Exhibits A–E (submitted June 19, 2026) · ADM264 Administrative Determination Letter (July 1, 2026), with Exhibits 1 and 2 · Notice of Public Hearing, APP261 (mailed Aug. 12, 2026) · Appeal Letter (July 2, 2026) · Early Assistance file EA2461 · Boundary Line Adjustment file EXBL261 · El Paso County Planning & Community Development, Buc-ee’s Update (updated Aug. 10, 2026).

Case law — Langer v. Board of County Commissioners, 2020 CO 31 (No. 19SC650, Apr. 27, 2020) · People v. Cali, 2020 CO 20, 459 P.3d 516 · Lombard v. Colorado Outdoor Education Center, Inc., 187 P.3d 565 (Colo. 2008).