LITTLE COMPTON — Christy Durant and her fiancé, Derek DeSalvo, both from South Kingstown, planned to get married at the Stone House on Sept. 16. Those plans have now been dashed.

Also — possibly — on the rocks are Stone House's event plans for next season.

"We certainly won't take any new clients until we get a solid agreement as to what we can and cannot do. I don't see us booking weddings for the summer season 2018," said Kevin Vendituoli, attorney for the Stone House.

In Town Hall this Wednesday night, Sept. 5, at 7 p.m. the Little Compton Planning Board will take up and make recommendations about a special use permit (SUP) and a set of variances the Stone House is seeking relating to its future operation. At issue, among other matters, will be parking and the waiver of various requirements relating to the size of parking spaces, and the surface and landscaping for parking.

After a hearing on Wednesday, Aug. 16, a Newport County Superior Court rejected the couple's entreaties to waive licensing requirements, and the resolution of zoning issues regarding parking and noise that the requirements were based upon, and ruled that their wedding may not be conducted at the landmark establishment.

Opposing Ms. Durant in court were lawyers for the Town of Little Compton, and for Preserve Little Compton, a loose association of some 600 of the Stone House's neighbors who had vigorously opposed Stone House weddings and the noise, traffic and parking problems they say the events caused. Also present were lawyers for the Stone House.

"They had every opportunity to do the right thing. It's just for five hours," Ms. Durant said of the town and its officials, after the court decision.

"The Stone House caused the problem but the town had the authority to get us out of it," she said. "They had the opportunity to help us. They had the opportunity to override. If I was a citizen of that town I'd be ashamed. The nephew of the town solicitor got married there with no problem."

Resolving the zoning issues of parking and noise abatement has been at the center of the town's decision of whether or not to grant an entertainment license to the Stone House which would allow it to host weddings.

The court decision last week was the most recent in a succession of court rulings and Little Compton Town Council actions that for months cast a shadow on many couples’ wedding plans, though they may not have known it.

"We booked our wedding January 30," Ms Durant said. "On February 12 we attended the prelude to the food tasting, right after booking."

"No mention of anything was made back then then by the Stone House" of licensing problems or zoning issues, that might cause the wedding date to be problematic, she said.

"I took their word. I read the contract and asked my questions. I did my due diligence. I'm a bride first and an attorney second," she said. Ms. Durant is a health care lawyer in Providence.

"We first learned of the licensing issue and the inability to do our wedding this last July 21. Never before," Ms. Durant said. "I even asked when we had a detailed appointment with the Stone House in May if everything was okay with their license, after a colleague had mentioned what was happening with Sakonnet Vineyard and that I might want to check with the Stone House. I was told everything was fine, no problem."

It is unknown how many couples have been caught up in the Stone House's failure to get the needed license. Earlier this month Ms. Durant said she understood there were then 16 couples anticipating weddings at the Stone House, but that the number has recently dwindled to seven or fewer.

"None of us knew. One bride found out about the Stone House's problems the night before her wedding," she said.

Ms. Durant was speaking shortly after an Aug. 10 meeting of the Little Compton Town Council, when the council voted unanimously to reject a Stone House license application that would have allowed it to conduct weddings — Ms. Durant's included — for the remainder of the season.

By the same motion and vote that evening, the council also rejected a separate request — filed jointly by Ms. Durant and the Stone House — to license a single wedding event (Ms. Durant's) on Saturday, Sept. 16.

The rationale for the council's steadfast refusal to issue a license to the Stone House to conduct weddings, rests in part on a 2016 opinion of the town zoning official that the Stone House needed first to resolve zoning issues relating to parking and noise from outdoor entertainment.

The Stone House's never got that zoning relief, and a Newport Superior Court judge ordered on Wednesday, July 19, that Stone House to cease and desist from hosting weddings and other events until it is licensed to do so, a decision affirmed Friday, July 21, by the state Supreme Court.

Couples left in limbo
"We have nowhere to go," said Ms. Durant after the August 10 council meeting. "We have 175 guests all coming to town for the wedding. We have no options."

So that evening, standing in front of Little Compton Town Hall, Ms. Durant said, "some sort of immediate court intervention will be sought."

As promised, Ms. Durant went back to Superior Court last week, asking the court to intervene, and somehow allow her wedding to go forward. Paperwork for the intervention was filed the same week the council voted on Aug. 10.

It was against this backdrop of court and council decisions that Ms. Durant last week made her unsuccessful plea for having zoning and licensing requirements waived.

"We had offered to have decibel readers at the property line," she said, "and drapes that would be sound attenuating for the sides of the tents. We had arranged for parking outside of Little Compton, with buses to transport the guests."

If there was a specific neighbor who would be inconvenienced, she said, she would make arrangements for them to be put up overnight in a hotel.

Bed and breakfast accommodations in Little Compton for many guests have been booked and deposits paid, she said. "We have 16 vendors contracted for, and we're going to end up breaking some or all of those contracts." The entire Stone House had been rented out to her wedding party, she said. Space in hotels nearby had been booked, flowers bought from local farms.

She and Mr. DeSalvo, a sales consultant for Horizon Beverage, had paid a "site fee" of $4,500 to the Stone House for their wedding when they booked it. They estimated a total budget for their wedding at $50,000.
Mr. Vendituoli, testifying recently in Superior Court on behalf of the Stone House, said he had filed three different applications with the town council requesting an entertainment license — on Oct. 14, 2016, on Jan. 30, 2017, and on April 3, 2017 — all of which applications had been rejected or withdrawn or not otherwise acted upon by the council — for reasons believed to be related to the Stone House's failure to get zoning relief.

Stone House letters to brides
Mr. Vendituoli wrote in a letter sent on January 18, 2017, to prospective wedding parties that "despite the fact we have not yet received our Entertainment License from the Town of Little Compton, we anticipate that our application will be granted."

In his letter to brides and grooms Mr. Ventiduoli said "we hope this process moves quickly," and "we cannot be sure as to the timing of everything," and that "I do not believe there is much risk that the Town will prohibit the Stone House from conducting events with indoor entertainment."

"[E]ven in the unlikely event the Stone House is unable to obtain the licensing required to permit outdoor music during your event," he wrote, "you will most likely be allowed to play music within the Barn."

Asked if he ever told wedding parties that the Stone House might not be able at all to host their event, Mr. Vendituoli said "that's sort of implicit in saying we can resolve this."

Mr. Ventuoli has said, and testified in court, that the Stone House never sought zoning relief. Asked why, he said, "our approach was to curb down the level of activities to be within the historic use" of the property.