Planners OK new Forest Service site

Proposal for federal agency's Flathead headquarters goes before City Council

A new U.S. Forest Service Flathead headquarters is expected to be built by late summer 2007 south of the Glacier High School site.

The Kalispell Planning Board recommended Tuesday that the City Council approve a lease arrangement to allow the new headquarters to set up there.

The new 24,000-square-foot, one-story building is expected to hold about 120 Forest Service employees moving there from the department's Kalispell-based Flathead National Forest headquarters and its Whitefish-based Tally Lake ranger station. That move is expected to be finished in late fall 2007.

The 5.35-acre site is on land owned by the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation. Denver-based Goldberg Properties is negotiating leasing the site from the state, with a tentative 50-year lease for $24,611 annually. Goldberg then will build the new headquarters and lease the site to the Forest Service for $560,000 annually. The Forest Service leases the two current sites for $410,000 a year.

The city government has to review and sign off on major actions proposed for the state-owned land in northern Kalispell.

The board recommended 3-0 that the city approve the leasing arrangement. Bob Albert, Kari Gabriel and Robyn Balcom were absent. Rick Hull abstained because he helped assess the site's value.

The Forest Service's lease on its 29,400-square-foot Kalispell headquarters building expires this year. The lease on the 6,300-square-foot Tally Lake ranger station expires in 2007. In addition to its 24,000 square feet in office space, the new headquarters will include warehouse space and an equipment yard.

Although the leasing cost will be higher, the Forest Service expects to save money by consolidating the administrative, support and storage functions of the two current offices, said Forest Service spokeswoman Denise Germann.

Also on Tuesday, the Planning Board:

. Recommended some changes in the city's zoning law that requires a 300-foot buffer between new casinos and parks, churches and other casinos.

The City Council wanted the 300-foot buffer rule reviewed and changed after granting an exception in spring to allow the development of a Hilton Garden hotel complex with a small casino less than 300 feet from Lions Park.

Owners of new restaurants, taverns and hotels frequently want casinos as a cheap way to recoup the high costs of liquor licenses. Originally, the Planning Board thought the Hilton Garden situation would be a once-in-10-years predicament and didn't want to change the 300-foot buffer. But the council wanted it altered.

Now the Planning Board is recommending that if restaurants, taverns and other non-casino establishment want to put tiny non-gaudy casinos in the corners of their interiors to recoup liquor license costs, those places will be exempt from the 300-foot requirement. But those casinos have to be small, nondescript operations inside a business whose primary purpose is not gambling. These mini-casinos would be required to get conditional-use permits from the city.

. Delayed action for as long as 90 days on a proposed new type of housing development - dubbed "Cottage Gardens" - north of Three Mile Drive and 1,000 feet west of Meadows Lane.

David Hofstad requested annexation, appropriate zoning and a planned-unit development designation for 10.75 acres. A planned-unit development is a contract in which the city removes some zoning requirements in return for the developer taking measures to compensate for the leeway.

Hofstad's plan is to reduce the sizes of the area's lots from an average of 9,600 square feet to between 2,900 and 4,600 square feet. That would create 44 lots for small cottagelike houses with garages.

A private road would circle the outside of the rectangular area and a common courtyardlike backyard would serve all of the homes.

A likely clientele for these homes would be empty-nesters.

The Planning Board and city staff said the proposed circling road would be too narrow for fire trucks to use, and there would not be enough space in front of the proposed homes for parking outside of the garages.

However, the board liked the concept and provided Hofstad as many as 90 days to address its concerns. Hofstad's biggest obstacle is having a limited amount of space with which to work.