Big change for a family farm

By WILLIAM L. SPENCE

Grosswiler plan: 2,000 to 3,000 housing units on property west of Glacier High

The Daily Inter Lake

A longtime valley farm family and an Arizona firm are teaming up on the largest individual development proposal in Flathead County's history.

The Stillwater Meadows master-planned community is expected to have 2,000 to 3,000 residential units on 640 acres immediately west of the new Glacier High School, south of West Reserve Drive.

The project will request annexation into Kalispell and connect to municipal water and sewer services.

It will feature a variety of housing options - including single-family homes, townhouses and condominiums - as well as parks, trails, a 15-acre neighborhood commercial area and possibly a community center. Another 15 acres or so will be donated for a future school.

The property has been owned by the Grosswiler family for about a century.

"My grandparents originally homesteaded immediately north of there, and then bought the 160 acres immediately to the south in 1900," said Catherine Baier, whose parents, Paul and Starling Grosswiler, owned and farmed the 640 acres and operated a dairy.

"It's hard to sell off property that's been in the family that long, but we can't continue farming anymore," Baier said. "At least this way, we have some say in how it develops and how it looks."

Rather than simply sell the land outright, the Grosswilers are joining with The Aspen Group, a Phoenix-based real estate firm that has developed a variety of commercial, mixed-use and master-planned residential projects over the last 15 years.

"We spent about a year interviewing different developers," Baier said. "We chose The Aspen Group after we saw their project in Bozeman. It was very community-oriented, with nice landscaping, parks and trails, and a unified architectural style. It wasn't straight streets and houses all the same. It was a very attractive development."

Valley West, the Bozeman project, is a master-planned community with about 1,000 residential lots, soccer fields, parks and three lakes.

"We've sold 300 to 400 lots there so far," said Don Meyers, the founder and chief executive officer of The Aspen Group.

Meyers, an attorney by training, started the company in 1991. In addition to project financing, design and management, the firm handles some of the actual construction.

"We build almost all of the commercial structures in our projects," Meyers said. "We have done some residential construction, but with the Grosswiler project, we'll probably put some stiff [subdivision and architectural covenants] in place and try to engage local builders who are interested in building the kind of homes we want."

The intent of a master-planned community, he said, is to use landscaping, parkland and unified architectural styles to create a coherent neighborhood.

"Instead of selling off chunks of land and having a hodgepodge of buildings and smaller subdivisions that don't fit together, all 640 acres here will make sense," Meyers said. "It's about creating an environment that instills a strong sense of community, a place where families will meet and generations can come together as neighbors."

An application for Stillwater Meadows has not been submitted to the Kalispell Planning Office yet, but The Aspen Group has been talking with city planners for the last several months.

Planning Director Tom Jentz said the ability to plan and develop an entire section at one time - a square mile of land right on the edge of the city - creates opportunities that typically aren't available with smaller projects.

"Historically our dilemma with the 5-, 10-, 15-acre subdivision has been that you never get the regional parks, the roads, the larger facilities that are needed," he said. "You deal with growth in small increments and never get something that's big enough to work."

By planning an entire section at once, however, "you can create built-in compatibility between land uses," Jentz said. "You get a street system that runs through the entire area and don't have to hope roads connect in the future. You get a park plan for the whole area. I'd much rather do it this way."

Although master-planned communities are popular throughout the Southwest, it's unclear if they'll catch on here, simply because of their size.

Stillwater Meadows, for example, could by itself create as many lots as were approved in all of Flathead County in 2004 and 2005 combined. The number of new home starts in the valley averages about 1,100 units per year, so even if it's remarkably successful, the project will take time to build out.

Meyers said one of the virtues of this development is that everyone involved is in it for the long haul.

"In Montana, you need to have patience with any project because the velocity just isn't there - you don't sell homes as quickly as they do in Phoenix or the Southwest," he said. "But because of the way this deal is structured, we can have that patience. The Grosswilers are putting up the land, so we don't have to make decisions based on interest payments coming due. We can take the time to plan it right.

"This is a long-term project. Build-out will probably take 15 to 18 years. In the short term, there will be some intense competition [from other developments]. There will be times when the market is slow - but because this is a patience deal, that isn't a great concern."

Besides Stillwater Meadows, The Aspen Group is working on an 84-acre, 181-lot subdivision at Meadow Lake Resort in Columbia Falls. It also has plans for an upscale, 13-acre mixed-use project in Whitefish at the North Valley Hospital site.

"We believe in that area," Meyers said. "We're banking on the future being bright for the Flathead."

Reporter Bill Spence may be reached at 758-4459 or by e-mail at bspence@dailyinterlake.com