04/05/2026
Well, we have some horrible news. We started off with a bang. Our contractor was the best in the Verde Valley, our plans were drawn up, our dream was coming true. Plans were approved by the town and our restoration project at Clarkdale Classic Station was under way. We had an amazing concept. A kayak company with a small check in area, changing rooms, some outdoor showers and a lot of boat storage, a food truck court with power, water and sewer hookups ( there would be no generators running). A mostly outdoor seating area that would be covered and would have fans and heaters. We wanted a family and dog friendly outdoor atmosphere with things like giant jenga, giant connect 4, corn hole and other fun outdoor games. This building was just too small and cut up to have a large indoor dining area and our kayaks take up a ton of room. We did have a bar/dining area inside that seated about 20ppl that we added 2 points of egress to with outward swinging doors (to fire code) and a kitchen with state of the art exhaust hood and ancul system (fire suppression). The dining area also was going to be open most of the time with a roll up door as our concept was out door (We are a kayak company after all ). We had completely redone all of the electric, gas and plumbing, including sewer lines and brought everything up to current code. We had spent close to 300k dollars just to get to this point. Well because of this our building inspector (who we have already had it out with as he showed up at our home at 7am while we were getting ready for work and told our 17 year old daughter that if our political signs were not taken down before the end of the day he would be by to take them down. It’s all recorded on our ring cameras. Really all we had to do was move them back a few inches as a couple were in an easement but he failed to mention that) decided we needed to now have a chat with the fire department. Mind you he had already approved our plans and had already done an inspection. We had not deviated from the plans at all. We were not there but a friend that works on the crew told me he said, “I didn’t realize you were doing all this, now you guys need to get the fire department involved.” Weird he had approved and signed off on the plans with no mention of fire suppression in our plans or from him. Fire department shows up(after canceling last minute and rescheduling a week later). The fire inspector has no idea what town he’s even in and the fire marshal is so puffy chested he can barely breath. The fire marshal starts throwing codes around and clearly has zero clue what he is talking about. Rambling something about square feet, and we were well under the 1000 sqft. or 50%. He quickly gets very upset when he realizes he’s by far the dumbest human in sight. I ask him a simple question, please will you show me the code. Eight days later he produces an email, sent from his Samsung phone (super professional) where he states that year after year the town adopts the same ordinance. (it’s been twice in like 30 years) then produces a photocopy of a council packet from 2005 with an outdated code. You would think if it was “year after year” he could have produced something a bit less archaic. I wish I was making this stuff up. The fire marshal, Nate Bailey is a much larger liability to the tax payers of the Verde Valley than a dining area that seats 20 ppl without a 40k dollar sprinkler system, I assure you. I have the email and will post screenshots. This is what we are supposed to make a 40k dollar decision based on after we already had a solid budget. Long story short… this was a labor of love. We wanted this for our town, we wanted this for our friends and our family, we wanted to honor Mike Hensley and his legacy, it was a horrible business decision. The numbers barely made sense but our heart were so committed to Clarkdale that we moved forward. This increase in cost definitely rules out moving forward and having to walk in daily and look up at 40k dollars just hanging from the ceiling for no reason at all is not something that we want for our lives. This decision was not easy for us. It took its toll on us, our family, our marriage our everything. It consumed us. We can not move forward. We have owned multiple business in Clarkdale since 2008 it has been our home and we have been ALL IN SINCE DAY ONE. While we will take a huge financial hit the stress and insanity of dealing with just a few people that have something to prove to the world is not what we ever wanted to deal with. We work hard. We can earn more money. You can not put a price on peace, family, marriage, happiness etc. We are not upset with Clarkdale, we had everyone in town on our side except the building inspector. We had council people and other staff working around the clock on this. We felt the love and knew they wanted to help. We are not anti Verde Valley Fire, our son is a firefighter/paramedic with them and we are so proud of him. We consider VVFD our very good friends. We support them with everything we have ever had. We support every fireman, emt, medic,engineer, captain, battalion chief and anyone else that works there. I urge you to ask the next VVFD employee you run into about us. Long before our son worked for them we gave them nothing but our best. Next week we are catering at our cost for the fire department and have many times in the past. When we had Main Street Cafe and Pizzeria every Thanksgiving and Christmas we delivered dinner to station 36 in Clarkdale. This year we delivered dinner to station 32 in Cornville, because our son was there. We took time out of our elk hunt to go drive some VVFD guys back to their trucks when they got too far away. When Scott was on the Clarkdale town Council he was the biggest supporter of the Clarkdale/VVFD consolidation in town. MAKE NO MISTAKE WE HAVE SUPPORTED VVFD, OUR TOWN, OUR COMMUNITY AND OUR FRIENDS. It is our first love, we did not ever do what we did to get rich, we did it for our community that we loved so much. Community is what filled our hearts and made us rich in ways many will never understand. It would be hard to find someone to disagree. Our only opposition seemingly was from Fire Marshal Nate Bailey, Chief Danny Johnson and Clarkdale building inspector Bob (we just call him bob the builder because he’s a complete idiot). That’s three people and a weak code that has taken this away from all of us. So know that we LOVE you all and we wanted this so badly for all of you. We would have never put any of you in any danger nor would we put any fireman in danger, EVER. Please get more involved with your local politics. Make changes so this never happens to anyone ever again. It is the worst thing we have ever had to deal with. We love you Clarkdale and we tried. Happy Easter.
Love Scott and Ally.
