?Quit putting roadblocks in front of this development?

Many speakers favored Glacier Town Center at a Kalispell Planning Board public hearing on Tuesday.

There were 16 people who spoke out of the roughly 50 people present.

Fourteen, including representatives of the Kalispell Chamber of Commerce and the Flathead Business and Industrial Association, wanted the Planning Board to green-light the project, although one wanted a loose end addressed first. Another person had technical concerns about lighting. And one wanted the Planning Board to delay its recommendations to study the latest wrinkles that have materialized.

?They?ve jumped through more hoops than we?ve asked any other developer to do,? said Denise Smith, director of the Flathead Business and Industrial Association.

Former Kalispell City Council member Bob Herron said: ?It?s time to quit putting roadblocks in front of this development."

Mayre Flowers of Citizens for a Better Flathead, however, argued that more time is needed for the board and the public to digest all the information.

She pushed for any new information to be made publicly available a few days before the Planning Board?s Dec. 11 meeting ? criticizing the fact that some of the latest information from the city, the state and Wolford Development first became public on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, plus on Monday and Tuesday.

Flowers contended that the traffic situation needs more study.

And she argued that the city should delay a decision on Glacier Town Center?s preliminary plans and planned unit development contracts until the City Council adopts Kalispell?s transportation plan and road impact fees.

A road impact fee is a one-time charge against newly built or newly annexed buildings and homes to help the city pay the capital costs for handling the extra traffic. An advisory committee is still crunching numbers for Kalispell?s road impact fees, which are expected to be huge for big commercial ventures.

Council decisions on road impact fees and a long-range transportation plan are expected in the near future.

Flowers also raised a question about the amount of Glacier Town Center land being earmarked for commercial use.

Glacier Town Center?s 485 acres are in a 600-acre rural site designated by Kalispell?s urban growth policy as ?KN-1.?

The growth policy limits commercial uses to 45 percent of those 600 acres when they are annexed. Another 25 percent is set aside for mixed residential and commercial use. That translates to 270 acres for commercial use, plus up to 150 acres that could be used for commercial purposes ? up to 420 acres overall.

Glacier Town Center?s 485 acres has 322 acres earmarked for commercial use ? taking up the KN-1 area?s 270 commercial acres plus 52 of the mixed-use acres.

And the Wolford project has 163 acres slated for a mix of commercial and residential use although the KN-1 site potentially would have only 98 mixed-use acres left (if 52 acres were already transferred to commercial use).

Flowers questioned whether Glacier Town Center, under a planned unit development, could conceivably gobble up more commercial acreage than the city?s growth plan has set aside for an even larger area.

Glacier Town Center?s plans also call for 282 single-family houses, 150 townhouses and 200 apartments to be built on the mixed-use acres by 2020.

Tom Jentz, the Kalispell planning director, said the owners of the remaining 115 acres of the KN-1 area likely would have to build only homes or build commercial structures faster than Wolford Development to get any crack at the business-designated acreages.

One loose end was brought up by the North 93 Neighbors, a grass-roots group that had fought the project in court but later reached a compromise with Wolford Development.

Part of the compromise involved Wolford Development donating five acres near the site?s center for a community-oriented facility.

Spokeswoman B.J. Carlson said the organization wants an access street built from Whitefish Stage Road to the five acres in Glacier Town Center?s first phase, which is supposed to be completed in 2009. The North 93 Neighbors group wants easy public access to the five acres to get a plan rolling on building a community center.

North 93 Neighbors supports the Wolford project if the future ownership of the five acres is nailed down. The group also took Wolford Development?s side in contending that seven northern access roads would be too many.