Muzzleloaders fight eviction notice from new property ownersA local shooting club is fighting efforts by its new landlord to evict it from property it’s used as a firing range for 27 years.

The Fort Clatsop Muzzleloaders were told last month they could no longer use a shooting range and campground maintained by the club on land off Lewis and Clark Road south of Astoria, and had to vacate the property this week.

But a group member claims the new owner has no legal grounds to evict them, and says they intend to stay through the end of the lease in 2007.

“We don’t plan on vacating the land,” said club member Teresa Brown.

The new owner, Leslie Maxwell of Long Beach, Wash., says the shooting isn’t compatible with the horse-boarding business she and her husband plan to open on the property, and claims the muzzleloaders club isn’t following the rules of its lease.

The muzzleloaders first began using the site in 1977 for gatherings and competitions featuring old-fashioned, black-powder firearms. The five acres the club leases for the shooting range and campground are part of a 200-acre parcel purchased by the Maxwells in January from longtime owners Jack and Dorothy Burkhart.

In March the group sent a letter to the Maxwells informing them that the club was adding the couple to its insurance policy, and that they would receive the annual $250 lease payment in July. It also said the club was prepared to re-sign the lease with the new owners.

Maxwell responded in a letter April 22 informing the group that its use of the land for a firing range violated county zoning rules. “Consequently, the lease is void and terminated effective immediately,” she wrote.

She told the group it would have to end all use of the land and remove all club property by May 5. Her original letter was posted on the gate of the property, and Maxwell said Tuesday she posted a second notice this weekend offering to work out some arrangement with the club to remove its property from the site by May 19.

Maxwell said Tuesday that she and her husband plan to open a boarding stable on the property. Her insurance carrier informed her that it could cost 20 times as much to insure the property as she pays now if the gun group and the boarding business both used the land, assuming coverage could be obtained at all, she said.

Maxwell claimed the club is also violating the lease by allowing members on the site all the time instead of just for its once-a-month shooting competitions, and is even allowing modern semi-automatic firearms to be used there – something the couple wasn’t aware of when they bought the land in January, she said.

But club member Teresa Brown said the lease has no limits on when the range can be used or what kinds of activities can take place there, as long as they’re legal. “She has seen the lease,” she said.

Brown said the club was told by a staff member of the county Community Development Department that the shooting range is allowed at the site as a pre-existing, non-conforming use because it pre-dates the county’s land-use laws. The club was waiting for a more definitive opinion from the department today, she said.

Maxwell responded in a May 1 letter that the county zoning code went into effect in 1966 and does cover the club’s activities, and that the club is violating the lease by advertising events for non-members and for non-muzzleloading firearms. She also asked the county planning department Monday to issue a formal written opinion.

The group hosts monthly shooting competitions and work parties. But individual members are also free to use the area at any time, Brown said. The site is gated but trespassers have come on to the property.

“We can’t stop people who are not club members from hiking in,” she said. “We have had some of our targets destroyed by people hiking in and shooting their own weapons.”

The club has dozens of wooden and sheet-metal targets, as well as shovels, rakes and other equipment that would be difficult to remove in the short period of time demanded by the Maxwells, Brown said.