Rysavy sues Boulder County over homebuilding restrictions

BOULDER — A longtime local entrepreneur has sued Boulder County officials over restrictions they placed on plans for a high-country home west of Boulder that he hopes to build as a secluded retreat where he could retire. His attorney believes the outcome could have constitutional implications that could spread far beyond this case.

Jirka Rysavy, founder and chairman of Louisville-based Gaia Inc. (Nasdaq: GAIA), which provides streaming video, filed the complaint Wednesday in Boulder District Court against the Board of Boulder County Commissioners, its three members and Dale Case, the county’s director of community planning and permitting.

At issue is the proposed home on a 35-acre parcel, one of several tracts that Rysavy owns totaling 170 acres on the west side of Flagstaff Mountain in unincorporated Boulder County.

According to the nine-page complaint, Rysavy on Nov. 19 applied to construct the 5,187-square-foot residence with a two-story pitched roof rising 21 feet above the existing grade. However, Case determined on Dec. 20 that no more than 3,864 square feet of residential floor area — including 2,383 square feet of floor area in an already existing gym and barn — could be approved.

According to the complaint, Rysavy appealed Case’s determination and worked with consultants to develop a revised plan based on county concerns about its visibility from the surrounding public roadway and especially the Lost Gulch Overlook. Rysavy on Jan. 28 submitted the new plan,  which specified a 4,354-square-foot home with a flat, live roof that rose 15 feet above the grade.

At the appeal hearing 14 days later, according to the complaint, the county staff didn’t analyze the revised plan and the county commissioners didn’t consider it. Instead, they based a ruling on the Nov. 19 submittal, which included the taller home with the pitched roof.

Despite Rysavy striving to prove to the commissioners that the newer design wouldn’t be visible from the overlook, the complaint said, the panel upheld Case’s decision.

“We don’t believe it’s visible at all from Lost Gulch Road,” Edward R. Byrne, Rysavy’s Boulder-based attorney, told BizWest Thursday. “We even offered to convey a conservation easement for the development rights on 4543 Flagstaff Road, which is more visible from the Lost Gulch overlook.”

By imposing the 3,864-square-foot residential floor area size limit, according to the complaint, “the Commissioners abused their discretion and exceeded their jurisdiction while exercising their quasi-judicial function, by imposing a 3,864-square-foot residential floor area size limit.”

Byrne called the situation “an interesting case,” adding that “I’ve always had concerns about their use of what is essentially a two-dimensional horizontal floor area number as a surrogate for what is visible, which is a three-dimensional value and has more to do with the facades and how the home is designed. The county has been using that standard for some time, and they’re actually looking to kind of double down with the new home size regulations they are considering.”

Under the former Boulder County land use code, that 125% of the median residential floor area was “presumed“ to be compatible with the defined neighborhood, but Rysavy’s complaint called that “an arbitrary and capricious two-dimensional value that bears no rational relationship

to a consideration of whether a particular proposed development may have either a ‘significant’ impact or a ‘significant adverse’ impact on surrounding land uses or neighborhoods.”

Byrne said “100% of the median is the new proposed maximum, and it will no longer be a ‘presumption’ that can be overcome.”

The complaint says the requirement that an applicant must overcome the “presumptive size maximum” employs an “irrational, arbitrary and capricious surrogate value to deny reasonable residential development proposals.” Rysavy contends that that maximum, plus the county land use code’s neighborhood-compatibility provisions and its definition of a “defined neighborhood” are “not rationally related to a legitimate and substantial governmental purpose.”

Therefore, the lawsuit contends, Rysavy is entitled to a declaration that those sections of the code violate the Colorado Constitution.

“They’re trying to not have hearings and just say this is the rule: It’s the median number and no more,” Byrne said. “That’s going to ripple out into the county in ways that I don’t think anybody has been able to wrap their brain around. But that’s still in process.”

Reached Thursday afternoon, Case said he had yet to see the complaint and could not comment. Attempts to reach Boulder County attorney Ben Pearlman were unsuccessful, and Rysavy, reached Friday, referred all questions to Byrne.

Rysavy, who was born in the former Czechoslovakia, founded Gaia as “Gaiam” in1988 in Broomfield to sell yoga equipment, alternative medicine products and mail-order exercise videos. In 2024, according to its fourth-quarter earnings report released in March, Gaia’s streaming membership count rose to 856,000, up from 806,000 on Dec. 31, 2023.

Ryysavy has had other successful business ventures as well, earning him a seven-page profile in Inc. Magazine and selection as a runner-up for its 1995 Entrepreneur of the Year. He also was inducted into the Boulder County Business Hall of Fame in 2013.

He founded office products company Corporate Express in 1986 and steered it to become a Fortune 500 company that was ultimately acquired by Staples Inc. The natural-foods grocer Crystal Market he founded in Boulder, which became Wild Oats Market when he sold it in1987, eventually was purchased by Whole Foods Markets Inc.

Rysavy also was a silent partner in Boulder Business Information Inc., which published the Boulder County Business Report. Under its current ownership, that publication was merged with the Northern Colorado Business Report in 2014 to become BizWest.

The case in Boulder District Court is Jirka Rysavy v. the County of Boulder, State of Colorado; the Board of County Commissioners for the County of Boulder, State of Colorado; Claire Levy, Marta Loachamin and Ashley Stolzmann in their official capacities as members of the Board of County Commissioners; and Dale A. Case, in his official capacity as Director of Community Planning and Permitting for the County of Boulder, State of Colorado. Case No. 2025-cv-30209.

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