Kalispell considers 325-acre project north of city limits

By JOHN STANG

The Daily Inter Lake

Tight proactive city planning?

Or a sloppy habit that Kalispell needs to nip in the bud?

Those opposing philosophies got aired Tuesday as Kalispell's Planning Board debated whether the city should absorb and control a 325-acre housing project 2 1/4 miles north of the town.

"This is worse than sprawl, it's leapfrogging," said planning board member Rick Hull.

However, board member Bryan Schutt said: "This is a heck of a lot better than what is spooling out along Highway 2."

Silverbrook Estates - at the southwestern corner of U.S. 93 North and Church Drive - could be the first major northern addition to Kalispell after the city council recently changed its growth policy on how the town should expand north of its West Reserve Drive border.

Silverbrook's owners have merged into Ninety-Three & Church LLC, and want to be annexed into Kalispell. Their plans mesh closely with how Kalispell's government wants to see the city expand north to Church Drive.

But if the City Council approves annexation, Kalispell will have an 325-acre "island" of city land surrounded by rural Flathead County. That would be a duplication of the sparsely-occupied 55-acre Old School Station industrial park, which is an city island two miles south of Kalispell.

The developers want to build 466 single-family houses, 120 townhouses and 13 commercial buildings - including possibly grocery store - during the next 10 years at that site. The plans included donating a 2.5-acre site for a fire station in Silverbrook's northwest corner, two parks, a 120-foot buffer zone with a berm between the buildings and U.S. 93, and a trail system throughout the site and along the Stillwater River.

The townhouses and commercial lots would be developed in the site's northeastern corner after at least 249 single-family homes and a fire station are built.

Access to Silverbrook would be limited to Church Drive and a new road, which would extend Tronstad Road to the west of U.S 93.

Howard Mann, one of the developers, said Ninety-Three & Church LLC plans to pay the state for acceleration and deceleration lanes on U.S. 93 for Silverbrook's southern entrance. He also said the developers plan to pay the estimated $4.5 million cost to extend water and sewer lines from Kalispell to Silverbrook.

Only three of seven planning board members - Tim Norton, Hull and Schutt - showed up at Tuesday's workshop session. Consequently, the session had no binding legal nor political meaning beyond an airing of opinions.

The Silverbrook project is expected to go to a planning board public hearing Nov. 14 at the earliest. After the board makes recommendations on the Silverbrook proposal, those recommendations will go to Kalispell's City Council for the actual decision.

Hull did not like the idea of a 2 1/4-mile gap between Silverbrook and the rest of Kalispell. He said there is no guarantee that the city will expand out to connect with it, plus there is a possibility that Silverbrook could end up at the point of a narrow three-mile-long finger of Kalispell jutting into Flathead County.

Kalispell's government would have to provide police and fire protection, plus utilities for 325 acres away from the rest of the city. Kalispell would likely have to go to its taxpayers to finance construction of a new fire station on the 2.5 acres donated by Ninety-Three & Church LLC, Hull said. Also, the city government does not have impact fees in place to deal with extra roads, parks, plus fire and police protection for the new houses, he said.

Tom Jentz, the city's planning director, said the city council expects to soon tackle whether to create those impact fees -one-time assessments to new buildings to offset the extra costs to the city government.

Hull did not like a precedent of Kalispell annexing "islands" two or three miles from the city, while parts of the town - such as the Buffalo Hill area plus northern Kalispell west of U.S. 93 - still have empty spaces to be developed. Kalispell should encourage development close to the city limits and then expand out, he argued.

Hull worried that creating "islands" would encourage developers to buy land next to those sites but away from the city - because the outlying properties would likely be cheaper than land between Kalispell and the "islands." Consequently, the incorporated "islands" could expand farther away from the city, Hull speculated.

Meanwhile, Norton and Schutt said that if Kalispell annexes Silverbrook, that would encourage the type of development that the city wants to see and annex to the north.

Schutt and Norton said that means Kalispell can limit access to and from U.S. 93 south of Church Drive, create wide buffers to keep new buildings away from the highway, and tightly control the water and sewer burden that the area would put on the city's sewage treatment plant.

They also said that the city's recent growth policy changes will limit its annexation to south a of a line roughly defined by Church Drive and Birch Grove Road.

That's "the line in the sand," each said.

A basic Kalispell policy has been that it will only annex lands where the owners request that action. Jentz said that several landowners in the potential growth area north of West Reserve Drive have talked to the city government about possibly annexing - including owners of sites that could connect Kalispell to Silverbrook during the next year.