Lakeside plan moving forward

Traffic safety a big concern that draft tries to address

U.S. 93 dominates Lakeside.

The resort businesses are on the east side and the bread-and-butter businesses are on the west.

Many homes are on one side. Flathead Lake is on the other.

You can't get from one segment to another without dashing across the heavily used highway.

U.S. 93 is a combination of a bottleneck and a barrier for Lakeside.

And the highway is one of the top priorities of a fledgling Lakeside neighborhood plan revision going to the Lakeside Community Council on Tuesday.

A planning committee is currently doing the final assembly of a draft plan for the community council.

If the community council gives its OK, the plan will be opened up for public feedback and modifications.

"We want the community to read it, comment on it and bring their own ideas to it," said Debbie Spaulding, chairwoman of the drafting committee.

Lakeside's current neighborhood plan was adopted in 1995.

The 1995 document contains no standards, visions or goals. Growth has blossomed in Lakeside since 2001, with only the current sparse neighborhood plan in place.

Mostly by mail, the drafting committee conducted a community survey in 2008, and then used that feedback to begin putting together a first draft in late 2008.

According to the 2000 federal census, unincorporated Lakeside had 1,679 people, 705 households and roughly 800 out-of-the-area landowners.

The committee sent out 1,265 survey forms. Roughly a third were returned to account for 966 people and 421 households, -more than half of the area's permanent population.

The respondents had an average age of 54 and a significant number of apparent retirees. The responding households tallied 806 adults and 160 children younger than 18. Most were homeowners and year-round residents.

In rough terms, the survey showed that:

n Access to Flathead Lake and traffic safety concerns are the leading concerns.

n Walking and bike paths plus open spaces and parks are other top concerns.

n Affordable housing is a concern, but does not rank as high with the Lakeside public.

n A theme of keeping a small town feel with no strip-mall-like businesses wove through the responses.

"Safety was a huge issue," Spaulding said.

Three major intersections - Bierney Creek Drive, Adams Street and the combined Blacktail Road-Stoner Loop -all link with U.S. 93 with yellow lights as traffic controls. In recent years, traffic has killed two people in Lakeside's business district.

The village needs more crosswalks, sidewalks and other walking-biking pathways, Spaulding said.

Lakeside is a hodgepodge of zoned and unzoned areas.

The draft going to the community council likely will recommend zoning for all of Lakeside, Spaulding said, acknowledging that could become a controversial proposal.

A neighborhood plan is essentially a document of grassroots guidelines on how an area's residents want to see their area developed.

Such a plan is nonregulatory and not legally binding, but is used by the county's planning department, planning board and commissioners to guide land-use recommendations and decisions.

Flathead County has 17 neighborhood plans for unincorporated areas that date back to the 1990s. An 18th plan recently was added.

Since Flathead County installed a new growth policy in 2007, the original 17 neighborhood plans need to be reviewed and probably updated to comply with the new policy.

Lakeside's upcoming proposal is the latest in a handful to do so.

So far, Flathead County has created one new neighborhood plan for the Riverdale area, declared Helena Flats' existing plan as OK, and gone through long, tough revisions of the North Fork and Bigfork plans. Revisions are in various stages for the Ashley Lake, Little Bitterroot Lake and Rogers Lake plans.

A recent trial balloon to create a neighborhood plan for Evergreen overwhelmingly was rejected by residents.

Controversies ranges from opposition to the idea of neighborhood plans because of not wanting an extra level of government to clashes over the nuts and bolts of individual plans. The conflicts have a major subtext of how a community feels about development.

Spaulding expects similar concerns with the Lakeside draft.

"It's not about having no development. It's about planning for development," Spaulding said. "My feeling is having a plan in place will help developers. … These are guidelines we can follow."

Tuesday's Lakeside Community Council meeting on the neighborhood plan draft is at 7 p.m. at the Lakeside Sewer Building. More information is available on the Web at http://lakesideplan2008.com.

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