{"id":21785,"date":"2025-06-17T00:09:59","date_gmt":"2025-06-17T06:09:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/church-advances-plans-for-multimillion-dollar-arena-in-bayfield\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T22:09:34","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T04:09:34","slug":"church-advances-plans-for-multimillion-dollar-arena-in-bayfield","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/church-advances-plans-for-multimillion-dollar-arena-in-bayfield\/","title":{"rendered":"Church advances plans for multimillion-dollar arena in Bayfield"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"A
A rendition of the future 90,000-square-foot Pine Valley Heritage Arena. The Bayfield town board approved rezoning the land to agricultural. (Courtesy of Trudy Fuher)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Representatives from Pine Valley Church met with Bayfield town staff earlier this month to discuss the construction of a $40 million event venue called the Pine Valley Heritage Arena, an expansive complex off County Road 501 near Bayfield.<\/p>\n

According to Stephen Proud, community development director for the town of Bayfield, town officials and representatives from Pine Valley Church met to better understand the project and discuss the steps required to begin the construction application process.<\/p>\n

The Rev. Scott Kujath of Pine Valley Church has dreamed of building the 90,000-square-foot event complex since the early 2000s. Complete with an indoor rodeo arena, offices, outdoor warm-up pens, an event barn for smaller gatherings, an outdoor plaza and vendor space, the complex would provide Southwest Colorado with a unique event space the region currently lacks, Kujath said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve communicated with the town,\u201d Kujath said. \u201cWe\u2019ll be refiling all of this with the town of Bayfield the first part of August.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, according to Proud, this kind of project is not currently possible based on the existing land designation. The area under consideration is zoned for residential use, which means building the arena violates current zoning code.<\/p>\n

Proud said Bayfield\u2019s Planning Commission and Board of Trustees would need to approve rezoning the property. If approved, Pine Valley Church could then submit an application for the arena project, which would also be subject to a comprehensive review by town officials.<\/p>\n

\"The
The Pine Valley Church wants to build its Heritage Event Center in this grassy field along County Road 501 north of Bayfield. (Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald file)<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Kujath said he has factored this into his timeline and hopes the arena will be finished by late 2026 or early 2027.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf everything keeps going without any major hiccups, from the fundraising side to the construction side, 2027 would probably be the goal,\u201d Kujath said. \u201cWe\u2019re going to start holding some of our first committee meetings in August and give people a chance to express some of their concerns and how we\u2019re doing our best to try to alleviate some of that.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the largest hurdle for Pine Valley Church is fundraising. According to the church\u2019s website, it has raised only $1.5 million \u2013 a fraction of the roughly $40 million estimated to complete the project.<\/p>\n

Kujath hopes the money will come from private donations rather than loans, allowing the church to operate the complex debt-free. That presents a unique challenge, as finding private donors with the needed resources has proven difficult. Still, Kujath said he is hopeful and committed to overcoming that challenge so the church can focus on its work instead of repaying a large loan.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe aren\u2019t going into debt to build this thing, and so it\u2019s paused,\u201d Kujath said. \u201cIf you have high debt in building this, then you have to do the big events just to pay the bills. So that\u2019s why it\u2019s such a big deal to us to make sure that we do this debt-free \u2013 to make sure that we maintain our purpose and our mission.\u201d<\/p>\n

sedmondson@durangoherald.org<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

application process to begin by end of summer <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21786,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[731,2281,28],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-21785","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-bayfield","tag-church-and-state-relations","tag-headlines"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21785","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21785"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21785\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":77458,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21785\/revisions\/77458"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21786"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21785"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21785"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21785"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=21785"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}