City studies development of railroad area

By JOHN STANG/Daily Inter Lake

The city of Kalispell is looking at a grant, a study and a survey to help bolster downtown over the next several years.

The city's Community Development Department discussed those efforts Monday with the City Council at a workshop session.

The three ventures are:

n Applying for a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency grant of up to $400,000 to pay for ecological assessments of lands to identify future environmental trouble spots.

The city government is especially interested in conducting these studies along the BNSF Railway tracks that cross northern downtown.

The city hopes eventually to obtain the area along the tracks, remove the tracks and use the strip to boost downtown development.

n Contracting with Applied Communications and CTA Architects Engineers to map out what could be done with the BNSF strip after the tracks are removed.

Possibilities include small parks, a bike path, extending more north-south streets, putting an overlook at Woodland Park, and putting retail storefronts on the strip to match the rest of central Kalispell.

The conceptual work will cost $15,000, which will be paid out of $35,000 that the city's 2008-09 budget has allocated for such work.

A wrinkle is that BNSF likely won't remove the tracks until the two downtown businesses the railroad serves are moved to Evergreen.

However, the Evergreen site- which used to hold Kalispell Pole & Timber, the Reliance Refining Co. and Yale Oil Corp. - has significant underground oil contamination problems expected to take a few years to eliminate.

The downtown businesses cannot move there until the contamination is removed. And the tracks cannot be torn out until those businesses are gone.

Consequently, the city taking over the track area is likely several years in the future.

Council member Bob Hafferman wanted to delay the conceptual work until the city is ready to take over the track area.

n Seeking federal money to survey roughly 75 old buildings in the greater downtown area to see how many of them are eligible for the National Historic Register.

Owners of buildings listed on that register would become eligible for tax credits if they rehabilitate the structures to reflect their histories.