The sprawling white house, on a dead end in a quiet rural part of southern Oro Valley, is marketed in cyberspace as Villa D'Amore - the villa of love.
Its website promises happy couples-to-be a "gold standard" wedding - a romantic setting plus an extensive menu selection, including a champagne brunch and a choice of several kinds of cuisine.
And Villa D'Amore's marketing materials say it can accommodate wedding parties of up to 225 guests, with more possible at $50 per person for each guest over the 225-person limit.
The house is 9,715 square feet with balconies, a circular driveway, a turret and a swimming pool. It is located at 9410 N. Calle Loma Linda near North La Cañada Drive and West Calle Concordia.
The problem: Villa D'Amore is in a residential area in one of Oro Valley's oldest neighborhoods and zoning laws for the area prohibit commercial activity.
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Author and software consultant Matthew L. Skamser, head of Tucson Revival Ministries, says he's been leasing the home for the past two months, and didn't mean to cause trouble. He's trying to work with the town and still wants to move forward with weddings. But for now, he's refunded the deposit of one bride-to-be and won't take any more deposits until the issue is settled, he said last week.
"The goal was to have a place where my wife and I could live and do worship meetings," Skamser said. "If we can't do weddings, that won't stop us from worshipping God and praying in our home."
The town of Oro Valley has issued a "cease and desist" order to Villa D'Amore. Skamser said since most people book weddings six months to a year in advance, he's hoping to work something out before then. Villa D'Amore, which is in the Linda Vista Citrus Tracts neighborhood, asks for deposits of at least $1,000.
The Pima County Assessor's Office, which values the Villa D'Amore property and home at $1.1 million, lists the owners as Nahid and Enayat Rohani. The house was purchased in May 2005 for $750,000. The Rohanis could not be reached for comment.
Officials with the town of Oro Valley have received complaints from neighbors about Villa D'Amore, saying they do not like the traffic the house is generating in the normally serene area.
In one letter, a neighbor compared Villa D'Amore to a "BYOB dance hall," saying the owners are "blindly soliciting clients on the Internet and collecting a cover charge when they show up ready to party. I am fairly sure that wouldn't sit well with the town of Oro Valley or my neighbors, either."
Another neighbor wrote that the trail adjacent to Villa D'Amore is the only means for some 300 horses in southern Oro Valley to get to the Canyon del Oro wash system.
"We don't need large volumes of strangers speeding through the neighborhood," the neighbor wrote in a letter to the town.
Skamser stressed that no weddings have been held at Villa D'Amore to date and any traffic generated by the house was likely a result of a book-release party he held. He is the author of a newly published book, "You Are Revival: Heavenly Realities Manifesting on Earth."
"The A-frame signs we had up for that were apparently in violation," he said. "I understand people don't want to get additional traffic, but our circle of influence is not very large. It's like having family gatherings more than anything."
Skamser noted that religious activities are already allowable on the property, though Oro Valley officials say they'd still need to go through a permit process to hold religious gatherings there.
"The wedding stuff was just going to be a small subset of our intended uses of the property, which have been fully communicated to the Town of Oro Valley and the owners of the property," Skamser wrote in an e-mail. "We have the utmost respect for our neighbors and our neighborhood and will fully comply with any city ordinances related to permits, safety, signage, traffic, etc."
Oro Valley officials said they sent the owners a letter Jan. 25 telling them they cannot continue operating a business out of the house, said assistant town manager Greg Caton. Among other things, town officials found no evidence that Villa D'Amore has a business license.
"Essentially there are a number of violations and we spelled those out in a letter to them," Caton said. "We told them they should cease and desist all these non-permitted uses. They were utilizing signage, and that's not legal either."
Caton said it's possible that if owners go through the proper channels they could make the venue legal. But there's a process for that, and the neighborhood would have a say in the issue, too.
Any neighbors who notice events taking place at Villa D'Amore should call Oro Valley town officials, Caton added.
"There are some allowable conditional uses, but those require a process, including notification to the neighbors," Caton said. "And none of that has been completed."
Contact reporter Stephanie Innes at sinnes@azstarnet.com or 573-4134.
