Kalispell to vote on growth-policy change

The Daily Inter Lake

The Kalispel City Council will vote tonight on whether to change its growth policy to allow commercial, industrial and suburban-residential uses for 550 acres just south of town.

The requested change is in anticipation of an early 2009 request by the Siderius Family Limited Partnership to annex 207 acres within those 550 acres. The family proposes to build 535 homes and a neighborhood-hub business section.

Siderius Commons expects to set up a community land trust on part of the site to decrease the cost of housing. In a community land trust, a nonprofit organization sells homes, but keeps ownership of the land.

Also at 7 p.m. today, the council will take a final vote on whether to zone almost 82 recently annexed southern acres for B-5 business use.

In November, the council annexed nine tracts - totaling almost 82 acres in two oddly shaped segments - along U.S. 93 South between Lower Valley Road and Snowline Lane, which is owned by Gardner investments LLC.

No definitive plans have been mapped out on what will be built on the land.

The Siderius and Gardner sites would extend Kalispell to within a mile of Old School Station, a 55-acre island of incorporated land surrounded by rural Flathead County.