City Council votes to add 82 acres to Kalispell

By JOHN STANG/Daily Inter Lake

The Kalispell City Council voted 9-0 Monday to annex almost 82 acres of land into the town's south side.

The land is earmarked for business and light industrial use.

The council also gave preliminary approval to zone the land for B-5 business use.

Gardner Investments owns the land, which covers nine tracts in two oddly-shaped segments along U.S. 93 South between Lower Valley Road and Snowline Lane.

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

Downtown business owner Bill Goodman voiced concern about the B-5 business zoning designation, saying that is the same designation for downtown Kalispell, which allows offices.

He wondered whether that would set up potential competition for offices between downtown and south Kalispell.

Mayor Pam Kennedy said the council will discuss the B-5 zoning at a future workshop.

Goodman also brought up the zoning issue during a separate public hearing at Monday's meeting.

The hearing was on whether Kalispell should change its growth policy to allow commercial, industrial and suburban-residential uses for 550 acres just south of town.

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

Representatives from the Old School Station business park and Citizens for a Better Flathead supported the change, noting that 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.

The council will vote on the growth-policy change at a later meeting.

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.

Reporter John Stang may be reached at 758-4429 or by e-mail at jstang@dailyinterlake.com