Kalispell grows by a square mile

By JOHN STANG

The Daily Inter Lake

Kalispell is now 11 percent bigger.

On Monday, the city's size was 9.24 square miles. Today, it's 10.3 square miles.

However, Kalispell's population is still roughly 20,000 because no one yet lives on the newly annexed land just west of Glacier High School.

On an 8-0 vote Monday, the Kalispell City Council annexed the one-square-mile Starling site, along with three small sites elsewhere. Council Member Kari Gabriel was absent.

Starling's annexation comes with the council's preliminary approval for single-family zoning with modifications to allow 3,000 homes to be built there during the next 20 years. The land is just west of Glacier High School.

"This is as good a location for the expansion of the city that I can see," council member Bob Hafferman said.

Four people spoke against the annexation and zoning - contending that the site's proposed parks needed to be pinned down more, more traffic details need to be studied, and that zoning for R-2 single-family housing would have been better than the approved R-3 single-family.

A partnership of The Aspen Group (a Phoenix-based development firm) and the farming family of Viva Starling Grosswiler sought the annexation.

Starling eventually would have housing density of 4.7 units per acre. R-2 zoning with the adopted modifications would have allowed five units per acre. The adopted R-3 zoning with the approved modifications allows Starling to later seek up to seven units per acre in future phases.

The project has about 15 phases to build homes over 20 years on the one-square-mile tract of land.

The council voted 7-1 to approve preliminary plans for the first phase -putting 236 units, mostly single-family homes, on 63.3 acres.

Hafferman voted against the first phase's preliminary plan, arguing against some dead-end alleys in it.

The overall 20-year project is expected to have some neighborhood shops and parks scattered about in it, along with land put aside for a school.

Also Monday, the council:

n Annexed 8 1/2 acres of Ashley Heights with preliminary approval for zoning for single-family homes with permission to put 26 lots there. The site is south of Sunnyside Drive.

n Annexed Mountain Vista Estates Phase 4, which is 7.6 acres north of Three Mile Drive - along with preliminary approval for single-family-house zoning and to split the land into 19 lots.

n Annexed 1.3-acre along U.S. 93 South with preliminary approval for general business zoning.