Utility work precedes Wal-Mart construction

Digging is under way at the future site of north Kalispell's Wal-Mart Supercenter, but it's only to relocate water utility lines and create the pad where the store will be built.

It will be another couple of months before workers begin the digging that sends up walls at the south end of Hutton Ranch Plaza.

"We're fully entitled with the project," Josh Phair said Thursday. Phair is Wal-Mart's senior manager for public affairs and government relations.

"Basically we're up to the point of the building permit - we have not pulled our building permit yet. The work being done on the site is the work being done by the seller."

Hutton Ranch developer Phil Harris has been working on a build-out of his 46-acre commercial complex since summer 2006. This week's work by a fleet of earth-moving and excavating equipment on Wal-Mart's 17.7-acre parcel is on one of the final major pieces of Hutton Ranch.

City Planner P.J. Sorensen said a series of smaller buildings initially was planned on the site. When Wal-Mart decided to close its store in Evergreen and replace it with a Wal-Mart Supercenter at Hutton Ranch, utilities to serve it had to be relocated.

Sorensen said the building plans for the store were hand-delivered to the city on April 14. It allowed Kalispell's building department to begin its code review, the third and final phase of the general review process for any commercial project.

"We're at that third phase," Sorensen said. "It's broken into portions because they've been doing that utility work. Once the building department issues the permit they will be inspecting for foundations' and other structural issues.

Building Official Jeff Clawson said building, fire and public works reviews are underway.

"We put out the first set of comments (rising from that review) to the architect. We have two to three weeks to give that first response back to him," Clawson said. "Then it's in his lap to respond to use with corrected drawings or responses to our questions It's just a matter of getting the corrected drawings and the check. They're usually pretty fast about that."

Clawson said he hopes to issue the final building permit in May or June.

Wal-Mart will be ready to go out for general contractor bids shortly afterward, Phair said.

"We don't have a general contractor yet. We only accept bids from a general - sometimes they are regional in scope, sometimes they are not."

Contractors for projects in this area generally are from the Rocky Mountain area, but not always, he said. And those general contractors choose subcontractors independently of Wal-Mart.

"Usually they'll contract to local subs but it varies," Phair said.

"We expect most of that to occur around June, plus or minus a few weeks. We expect to start construction in late June or early July, something like that. As always, the timelines are fluid, they're complicated."

He said they expect to take possession of the store and start stocking items around May 2010, with an expected opening in may or June 2010.

The 275 Evergreen store employees will be offered the opportunity to move to the new supercenter, and another 150 or so will be hired to expand the staff to 350 or 400 in the new store.

The new store will have 176,000 square feet under roof and another 10,000 square feet in a seasonal garden center. That compares with about 130,000 square feet at the existing Wal-Mart.

Reporter Nancy Kimball can be reached at 758-4483 or by e-mail at nkimball@dailyinterlake.com