1,000 homes planned for Hungry Horse
By WILLIAM L. SPENCE
Development could quadruple size of community
The Daily Inter Lake
One of the largest individual subdivision applications in Flathead Valley history was submitted Tuesday to the Flathead County Planning Office.
The proposal - dubbed the South Fork Addition to Hungry Horse - calls for 1,000 residential units to be built on 90 acres of former U.S. Forest Service land on the southeast side of Hungry Horse.
If approved, the project would almost quadruple the size of the community.
The Hungry Horse Ranger Station currently stands on the northernmost portion of the site. The remainder of the property extends south along Colorado Boulevard to the South Fork of the Flathead River.
The area is unzoned.
Hungry Horse Development Partners and Stephan Byrd of Spokane submitted the application.
Byrd, who has family in the area, acquired the Forest Service site at auction last year with a bid of $2.38 million.
The subdivision application proposes that South Fork Addition be built in four phases over about 10 years. Almost two-thirds of the residences would be apartment or condominium units; there also would be 47 duplex townhouses, 53 triplexes and 16 single-family homes.
Another 60 commercial lots are planned on about 5 acres next to the highway. They would be built sometime after the ranger station relocates to a new facility.
The first phase of the project, according to the application, would involve 34 apartment buildings with a total of 400 residential units on 20 acres just south of the ranger station.
Phase 2 would feature all 16 single-family lots, 41 duplexes and 39 triplexes, for a total of 215 units.
Phase 3 would be south of Canyon Elementary School along the river. It would include 285 units divided between six duplexes, 14 triplexes and 39 apartment buildings.
The final phase would include all of the commercial lots, plus another 100 apartment/condominium units.
By comparison, there were 346 housing units counted in the Hungry Horse area during the 2000 census, with a total population of 934 people.
The phasing schedule calls for construction on South Fork Addition to begin next year. Each subsequent phase has a one-year delay, meaning all four phases would be under construction by 2010.
The application notes that "it is the goal of the developer to create a sustainable, livable, affordable community with an eye towards responsible environmental stewardship."
The project would have 32 acres of open space - more than a third of the overall acreage - including two parks and a network of bike/pedestrian paths. The developer has expressed interest in working with the county to upgrade an unimproved park adjacent to this property. He also wants to work with the Forest Service to create or improve public access points to the South Fork.
The subdivision would be connected to the Hungry Horse public water system.
Although it has a sewer district, the community doesn't have public sewer service. Consequently, the developer is proposing to build a new public wastewater-treatment facility.
"The plant will be designed in a manner that would allow the rest of the Hungry Horse community to connect in the future if they so desire," the application states.
After treatment and filtration, effluent from the facility could be used for irrigation or would be discharged into groundwater. The system, which would have to be approved by the Montana Department of Environmental Quality, eventually would be turned over to the Hungry Horse sewer district to own and operate.
The environmental assessment submitted with the application suggests that the impacts on local schools would be manageable, in part because "many of the units in the proposed subdivision will be second and vacation homes."
Younger children would attend Canyon Elementary, which is immediately adjacent to the project site. High-school students would go to Columbia Falls.
A traffic impact analysis provided with the application indicates that, at full build-out, South Fork Addition would produce 459 new vehicle trips a day in the morning and 736 in the evening.
The analysis, which has been submitted to the Montana Department of Transportation for review, "concludes that the development will have minimal impacts on the transportation system, and that no traffic mitigation is recommended or required."
The southern portion of the subdivision property along the South Fork was used as a landfill when Hungry Horse Dam was under construction. The federal government capped and closed the site a number of years ago; however, any activity that would interfere with it is now prohibited, including drilling, excavation and placement of building foundations.
Given that the federal government previously owned the property, it didn't generate property-tax revenue for the county or local school district.
By contrast, the developer "conservatively estimates" that the residential and commercial lots and improvements in South Fork Addition would have a combined market value of $210 million.
That would equate to a total taxable value of about $6.6 million, or about a 35 percent increase in the local school district's current tax base.
The Flathead County Planning Board is scheduled to hold a public hearing on the South Fork Addition application in November. The developer also held an open house for Hungry Horse residents last week and indicated that a second open house is planned in September.
Reporter Bill Spence may be reached at 758-4459 or by e-mail at bspence@dailyinterlake.com.