Whitefish approves Bridgewater subdivision

The Whitefish City Council on Monday OK'd the controversial Bridgewater Trails subdivision on the east side of Whitefish, but strapped on conditions to require additional infrastructure improvements from the developer.

The 82-home development, planned on nearly 31 acres at the southwest corner of Voerman and Monegan roads, has been in the neighbors' cross hairs since it began making its way through the planning process last July. Residents of the adjoining Shady River subdivision and other neighbors testified that traffic and drainage issues need to be figured out before that many homes are built.

It took well over four hours for the council to reach a decision on the project, but it passed 4-2 shortly before midnight. Council members Cris Coughlin and Velvet Phillips-Sullivan voted against the development. The planning board had earlier split its vote and forwarded it to the council without a recommendation.

Bridgewater Capitol Corp., represented by Tina Lawrence, and the Brad and Tana Knuth JT Living Trust are the developers of the project.

Bridgewater Trails is subject to the city's emergency ordinance that put new subdivision construction on hold until a master stormwater plan is completed. Developers propose a system of streetside swales instead of curbs and gutters to handle stormwater making its way to the Whitefish River to the west.

Whitefish Planning Director Bob Horne said the developers will have to prove their drainage plan can support that number of lots; otherwise the density will need to be decreased.

A little over six acres will be put into parkland to preserve seasonal drainage corridors on the property, but neighbors maintained the park will be a big, soggy ditch.

"Swales are mosquito pools," Sandee Watterud said, urging the council not to make concessions on the infrastructure. "This [parkland dedication] is garbage land they can't build on."

Mary Huston, who lives on Monegan Road, said the project perhaps should be renamed "Bridge Over Troubled Waters."

Longtime Voerman Road resident Dick Zoellner wondered if settling ponds would better handle stormwater runoff to allow antifreeze, fertilizer and other contaminants to settle out before reaching the river. Water running over frozen ground will be a problem in the spring, Zoellner maintained.

"I'm not sure the swales will work until the middle of June," he said.

Developer consultant Tom Cowan with Carver Engineering reiterated what he told the planning board last month - that the site has good drainage and groundwater shouldn't be "much of a problem." He checked into "horror stories" he'd heard about water problems in Creekwood Estates, across the road from the proposed Bridgewater Trails, and determined that many of Creekwood's drainage problems were "self-inflicted."

Traffic seemed to be an even bigger concern than drainage for neighbors. A traffic study indicated about 60 percent of the traffic generated from the new subdivision would use Park Avenue - a substandard road with a dangerous "S" curve - to get into Whitefish.

But Horne said Bridgewater Trails won't make Park Avenue any worse than it is now by putting more traffic on the road. Traffic engineer Mark Bancale pointed out that the "geometric deficiencies" of Park were a known condition when the property was zoned single-family residential and the master plan for that property was approved for urban density.

The developers will share in a portion of the cost for construction of a guardrail along the outside of the worst curve on Park.

While the developers will rebuild and pave 1,330 feet of Monegan Road, the council agreed to require curbs and gutters on that portion of road. Other attempts to have the developers improve Voerman Road were voted down.

The council fine-tuned a list of 30 conditions on the property, requiring weekly sweeping of public roadways near the subdivision to eliminate mud and dirt buildup and requiring sidewalks through the development.

Features editor Lynnette Hintze may be reached at 758-4421 or by e-mail at lhintze@dailyinterlake.com