An Awkward Silence
By Brian McNary
A public hearing was held on 10/22/25 by Toquerville’s Planning Commission. Topic du jour was the amended 2024 General Plan and a parcel of land owned by Bob Lichfield.
This came as a shock to me, I’ll explain why in a minute.
A Not-so-Brief History
First I must give some history of this parcel of land. Many years ago now, Mr. Lichfield “gifted” several acres of land to the City of Toquerville for the Parkway Project. In return, Mr. Lichfield asked that the city give him highway commercial zoning. They gave him zoning for the “gifted” land.
However, as the bypass was built, the city needed 11 more acres of land, including land they had long-ago zoned highway commercial. So now they felt they needed to give him more highway commercial zoning.
The challenge was that now the new potential highway commercial land is adjacent to residential land. The land in question is not on the highway. It is a peninsula or an “axe” shaped piece of property on the La Verkin side of the parkway just before you reach the bridge at the intersection of Shangrila Road. In fact, Mr Litchfield owns both sides of the road.
This highway commercial zoning would allow any number of commercial uses. It would also allow, presumably, an opportunity to sell the highway commercial property at a giant premium to a commercial developer. Apparently, there are no written contracts or agreements between the two parties. Because of that, all of this gets confusing very quickly.
While there is no historical, written, account of any of this, there is an email from Mr. Lichfield to previous councilmember Ty Bringhurst in 2022. That email was sent just prior to Mr. Lichfield applying for highway commercial in October of 2022. Mr. Lichfield reminds Mr. Bringhurst of the promises made long ago.
In January of 2023, the Planning Commission unanimously turned down the zone change to Highway Commercial. The next month, the City Council set aside the Planning Commission recommendation and in a 3-2 vote gave the highway commercial designation to the Lichfield property.
Directly thereafter, the Bences filed a lawsuit under the auspices that this zoning violated city code and that the zoning was exchanged illegally for land.
A few months after the highway commercial was granted, a relative of Lichfield’s, Jake Peart, attempted to obtain approval for an RV and theme park-type resort in the area. In a unanimous vote, 5-0, the Planning Commission rejected that application. In October of 2023, the City Council rejected it also.
On February 7, 2024, an amended General Plan was approved by the City Council, after previous approval by the Planning Commission.
Public Comments
So that is where things stood prior to this planning commission meeting. My shock came when Lynn Williams stood up at the beginning of the meeting and asked the obvious question.
“Why are we here? You’ve already given the zoning that we all objected to- to Mr. Lichfield. What’s left to discuss?”
There was an awkward silence that followed- but nobody offered any reason or explanation. The city lawyer was there.
This made the wheels in my head spin. Why had this meeting been called since the matter had already been settled? I spoke directly after Lynn Williams. I sat down and continued to wonder why this meeting had been called.
Ray Bence spoke. He said that in May of this year, city officials requested a meeting at the office of Bruce Jenkins, the city attorney, with Ray and his attorney.
“In that meeting, councilman Joey Campbell disclosed that the city had spent a lot of money defending the lawsuit and may need to raise taxes. I reminded them that their current attorney, Bruce Jenkins, had counseled them not to grant a zone change in exchange for land. I also told them they had put the interests of Bob Lichfield over the interests of the city. If the city had been willing, before they traded the land for zoning, I would have explored donating the money to the city and purchasing the land for the bypass, but no one would meet with me. They seemed determined to give zoning to Bob. At this point, the land is still not owned by the city.”
There were several other comments, mostly expressing concern over highway commercial zoning adjacent to a residential area. They can be seen on YouTube.
some issues
We discovered during this meeting that nobody on the Planning Commission had been informed of the Bence lawsuit prior to approving the latest version of the General Plan. None of them were made aware of it. This new General Plan approves additional acreage for Lichfield, I believe, and includes that pink “ax handle” running down Shangrila Road far from any Parkway frontage. The pink area in the new GP map overlay (see above) is the newly designated highway commercial.
The second issue I had was this “exchanging zoning for land” deal. In the eminent domain procedure, legally used everywhere, landowners are paid fair market value for land needed for public infrastructure. This happened to my family when the state of North Dakota and Montana took 4 acres from our family for a new bridge. We didn’t ask for “highway commercial zoning” nor would either state have granted it.
The third issue I have is that when they passed this latest version of the General Plan- I was unaware of the size and scope of the rezone. I was also unaware that any of us only had 30 days to object to the GP. I don’t know if they changed the highway commercial acreage or enlarged it depending on what the city has taken thus far.
The fourth issue I have is that I am extremely confused why this landowner has never once shown his face in public. I have never seen the guy. Mr. Lichfield and his schools have been the target of various legal proceedings, lawsuits, and at least one film. I don’t know if there are outstanding liens or judgements. These are all questions I’d like to hear the answer to. I’d also like to hear who Lichfield cut this deal with and when.
Where was legal counsel? Who was advising city fathers? Was it Heath Snow- the Firelight attorney? Or was all this before his time?
What is the purpose of having a Planning Commission if you can simply dismiss recommendations? Perhaps we should just get rid of them and save time and money.
Finally…
I have a theory about why this meeting was called but that will have to wait for now.
In the end, the Planning Commission voted 5-0 once again to reject the highway commercial designation. I am glad to see that one of our legislative bodies is using common sense and functioning according to guidelines.