Lakeside park expansion nearly finished

Volunteer Park on Flathead Lake in Lakeside is on track for a major expansion that will provide additional public recreation space alongside Flathead Lake.

Bruce Ennis and Maggie Davis are more than doubling the size of Volunteer Park by donating a nearly 2.5-acre parcel between the current park and Westside Condominiums to the north.

Flathead County established the current park in 2009 after Ennis and Davis donated 1.5 acres of land, followed by an additional 273 feet of lakeshore frontage in 2014.

“It is amazing, an amazing beach for our citizens,” said Jed Fisher, director of Flathead County Parks and Recreation.

Ennis could not say exactly when they will transfer the parcel to the county, but he said “we would hope it would happen sometime in August.”

Ennis said the current park is over capacity on a typical summer day.

“Currently the parking lot fills right up, it gets full before noon,” he said, and on a busy day there are twice as many groups as the park and the parking lot can accommodate.

But the new addition comes with a 54-space parking lot that will more than double the parking capacity. New handicapped-accessible concrete walkways will travel from the new parking lot to the existing walkways and the beach area, which has been rebuilt.

Ennis said new material has been added to the “dynamic equilibrium beach” and the beach will extend farther out into the lake, which will protect it from significant erosion, the effects of large waves and “any size of lake activity.”

It was a “pretty amazing undertaking,” he said.

The park was designed by Whitefish-based landscape architect Bruce Boody and his associate, landscape designer Carolyn Mulnix.

There are two new docks, with the northernmost dock large and wide enough to accommodate people with wheelchairs. There will also be a disconnected swim platform out on the lake.

Ennis said the new beach “will look a little bit different, but not a lot different” from what people remember from previous years.

The new parcel will feature three new pavilions, which will be available to rent. Those rental fees will help fund park maintenance.

The additional acreage will mostly be vital new green space for the park. Workers are currently in the process of adding new grass between the various trees on the parcel.

The parcel also came with an existing building that will become the new location of the West Shore Community Library. The former real-estate office is being remodeled for the arrival of the library.

“It’ll be their building,” Ennis said, adding they had just recently delineated the space between the park and the library.

There were some concerns about additional maintenance costs early in the process of developing the new section of the park. As reported in the Inter Lake in December 2019, Ennis and Davis received numerous ideas from the public for additions to the park, but eliminated many of the ideas from consideration to lessen the burden of maintenance costs on the county.

Ennis said despite having a bigger park to manage, he thinks the county is “very enthusiastic” about Volunteer Park.

“We’re thrilled to see the way people have enjoyed it,” he said. He added being on “the edge of spectacular Flathead Lake” it does not need many of its own special amenities.

Volunteer Park is located at the corner of U.S. 93 and Lakeside Boulevard. Hours of public use are from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m.

Reporter Colin Gaiser may be reached at 758-4439 or cgaiser@dailyinterlake.com