Oro Valley residents demonstrated last Thursday at Rancho Vistoso Boulevard and Vistoso Commerce Loop Drive, protesting plans to build a crematorium there.

Jim Davis / Arizona Daily Star

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A Superior Court judge delayed building permits again this week for a controversial funeral chapel and crematorium planned for the Rancho Vistoso area.

That brings the total delay of permits to three weeks.

The town of Oro Valley may still not issue any building permits, besides a grading permit, for Vistoso Memorial Chapel, 2285 E. Rancho Vistoso Blvd., a Superior Court judge said Monday.

The judge, John F. Kelly, extended a 14-day temporary restraining order until "soon after" attorneys finish filing their paperwork, he said. The attorneys' deadline is 5 p.m. Monday.

The court order is delaying the project's development, said Douglas Harpold, the Rancho Vistoso resident who plans to own and manage Vistoso Memorial Chapel.

"We're ready to get permits. We can move forward with the grading permit but we can't get permits until the decision," he said.

Rancho Vistoso residents Gregory D. Santoro and Larry and Brenda Ryan have taken the town of Oro Valley to Superior Court to compel the town to give them an Oro Valley Board of Adjustment hearing.

They would like to appeal the town's decision that a crematorium is a permitted use on Vistoso Memorial Chapel's planned site at the corner of Rancho Vistoso Boulevard and Vistoso Commerce Loop.

But Oro Valley has refused to accept their applications to appeal to both that board and the Development Review Board.

During last week's court hearing, the residents' attorney, Katharina Richter, said her clients are only there to ask the court to order that the Board of Adjustment hold a hearing, not to ask the court to judge the merits of the appeal.

But G. Lawrence Schubart — one of the attorneys from Stubbs & Schubart PC, the Tucson-based firm that is representing Harpold Real Estate and Vistoso Memorial Chapel LLC — argued in court that the residents are seeking a board hearing because it would further delay any development of the crematorium.

"What they're really striving for is that the Board of Adjustment stays all proceedings," he said. "If they appealed to the Board of Adjustment, it would stop the Harpold family in its tracks."

The Harpolds are not defendants in the lawsuit, but became legally involved via an application to intervene that their attorneys filed April 17.

Santoro and the Ryans are among the Rancho Vistoso residents who oppose the development of the crematorium on its planned site.

"If I had known a crematorium was proposed in our neighborhood, I would have never bought a house there," Santoro testified.