Council Rejects All Five Zoning Requests for 1285 E. Union Avenue

Article Summary: The Litchfield City Council on Thursday, Aug. 6, 2026, voted down all five zoning items tied to a proposed education, training and conference facility at 1285 E. Union Ave., ending — at least for now — Sunshine Living NFP’s bid to operate the former nursing home and to have its owners live on site. Five residents spoke in favor of the requests; only one alderperson cast a vote in support of any of them.

1285 E. Union Avenue Zoning Requests Key Points:

All five items failed: two special-use actions for the facility itself drew no aye votes at all, and three items tied to owner living quarters each failed 1-6.

Alderperson Joshua Hughes cast the only supporting vote of the night, backing the three residential-quarters items after voting against the facility permit.

The Planning & Zoning Board had recommended denial of four of the five items and approval of one — a citywide text amendment — which the council also rejected.

City Administrator Breann Vazquez told the council it “doesn’t necessarily make sense” to amend the city code for a use these applicants would be the only ones to seek.

LITCHFIELD — The Litchfield City Council on Thursday, Aug. 6, 2026, rejected every zoning request before it concerning 1285 E. Union Ave., defeating five separate motions that together would have allowed a commercial, private or public education, training and conference facility at the property and permitted the owners to live inside it.

The property, identified in city documents as PPN# 10-34-302-012, sits in the C-2 “Community Business” zoning district. According to the city’s staff report, it is bordered by vacant C-2 land to the north and single-family residences zoned S-1 to the south, east and west, with a church to the southwest.

Mayor Jacob Fleming moved the five items — numbered 12 through 16 on the agenda — to the front of new business after the applicants and their supporters addressed the council during public participation.

Five Votes, One Aye

Alderperson Sara Zumwalt, who carries the council’s building and zoning items, made all five motions and voted against all five.

Items 12 and 13 — a resolution making separate statements of findings of fact, and the ordinance that would have granted the special use permit for the education, training and conference facility — each drew no aye votes. On item 12, Alderpersons Bert Holloway, Marilyn Sisson, Dwayne Gerl, Zumwalt, Robbin Huffman, Hughes and Bob Garcia all voted nay. Item 13 failed on the same 0-7 count.

Item 14, an ordinance amending Appendix B of the municipal code to allow residential living quarters in education, training and conference facilities — converted to not exceed 1,500 square feet of living space — for an owner and immediate family as a special use within the C-2 district, failed 1-6, with Hughes the lone aye.

Items 15 and 16, the findings-of-fact resolution and the ordinance that would have granted a special use permit for owner living quarters at 1285 E. Union Ave., also each failed 1-6, with Hughes again voting in favor.

Vazquez explained the structure to the council before the first vote. “Special use permits have two action items,” she said, describing the paired findings-of-fact resolution and granting ordinance required for each request.

Asked what the Planning & Zoning Board had recommended, Vazquez said the board recommended denial of the facility permit. The staff memoranda in the council packet confirm the board recommended denial of items 12, 13, 15 and 16 and recommended approval of item 14, the text amendment.

Zumwalt, who attended the Planning & Zoning session, said the commission’s concerns centered on money. “There was a lot of questions about budget and how they were going to make the money to keep the facility open and working,” she said, adding that figures tied to room charges and transitional living remained in the applicants’ budget material and were “a little confusing for the council.”

On the text amendment — the one item staff had a recommendation of approval for — Vazquez advised against splitting the package. “These are probably the only applicants interested in doing this,” she said. “If you’re not keen on this for these applicants, you probably don’t want to amend the code to allow for others to apply. It doesn’t necessarily make sense in this case.” She later added that the request was “really a niche request that may make sense for these individuals, but I’m not sure that on its own makes sense as a code amendment.”

How the Property Came Before the City

A June 5, 2026, memorandum from Vazquez to the Planning & Zoning Board, included in the council packet, lays out the history. In January 2026, the city learned there were occupants at 1285 E. Union Ave. and that the owner, Sunshine Living NFP, had a website advertising overnight stays and other services at the property.

The city’s code enforcement officer arranged a meeting between city officials and the property owners, according to the memo. The owners said they had rooms rented to individuals staying multiple nights in the area and were moving into the property as their primary dwelling. They described an intended use as a transitional living facility — a sober living environment with the owners residing on site — along with educational training and conference space to rent, a community kitchen and daycare services for residents.

The city issued a cease-and-desist letter directing the owners to discontinue all disallowed uses, the memo states. The applicants then sought permissions for a transitional living facility, owner residency and an education, training and conference facility. After the applicants presented an amended multi-phase plan, the council referred the conference facility item back to the Planning & Zoning Commission because the scope of the project had changed. The applicants subsequently moved away from that three-phase plan, and the reworked package is what reached the council in August.

Supporters Say Transitional Living Is ‘Off the Table’

Five people signed up to speak, all in support. The minutes record them as Dennis Schutte, Dr. Mary Moran, Michelle Jackson, Ronald Sutton and Joan Schutte; the applications filed with the city spell the family name Schuette.

“We own the building at 1285 East Union, and we want to have occupancy and full use of that building,” Dennis Schuette told the council, before presenting a slideshow of architectural work he said he had done in the region.

Sutton, who told the council he had recently been elected to the organization’s board, said the disputed uses had been abandoned. “I wanted to make that clear that prison ministry and transitional living is off the table,” he said.

Jackson urged the council to set the earlier dispute aside. “I just want to urge you guys to let that be just a clean slate for them,” she said, adding that the building “was a nursing home and it is no longer able to function as a nursing home.”

Fleming told the applicants the council appreciated their nonprofit work but said transitional living had been a difficult subject in Litchfield. “One thing citizens didn’t want is to become a magnet,” he said, “because we have enough problems on our own, let alone attracting others.”

Vazquez said enforcement would be a separate matter. If a special use permit were granted and transitional living was later found to be occurring, she said, the city “would approach that as an ordinance violation, issue a cease and desist, and address it from there.”