Connector road may be built this year

A connector road between the new Walmart Supercenter and West Reserve Drive could go to bid as early as this summer.

That’s the hope of Montana Department of Transportation Director Jim Lynch.

But for it to happen, several pieces still need to fall into place, including a successful conclusion to right-of-way negotiations with Flathead Valley Community College and the developers of Mountain View Plaza.

The new Walmart store is set to open in June.

The road is expected to carry 21,000 vehicle trips a day when Hutton Ranch Plaza is fully built out — and Walmart is the biggest piece in that finishing phase.

After Hutton Ranch, Mountain View Plaza and Spring Prairie Center all are built out, the U.S. 93 North area is expected to see 25,000 trips a day.

“The [connector] road will go up on the FVCC property line and on the developers’ property line, so we need right-of-way from both,” Lynch said. “The bulk will be from the college.”

College President Jane Karas said on Tuesday that final agreement on the road alignment is not far off.

“We’ve been working with the Montana Department of Transportation to look at where the road placement would be right now,” Karas said. “We’re pretty close to having everything worked out.”

She said FVCC’s prime considerations were safety for students and others who use a cross-country ski trail and other facilities there, and an ability to meet the highway department’s needs.

The college’s land runs from U.S. 93 to the west bank of the Stillwater River and stretches north toward West Reserve Drive behind the Home Depot shopping center.

Part of the land came from a property swap with Hutton Ranch developer Phil Harris, who traded 90 acres and a cash payment for the college’s 20 acres of highway frontage.

A highway department official in Kalispell said the other main players in right-of-way negotiations include The Home Depot, Inland Development and Cenex Zip Trip.

One other piece that needs to fall in place, the connector road budget, is shaping up well so far.

“It looks like money is available,” Lynch said. The engineer’s estimate is between $2.5 million and $3 million for the connector road. It will be just under a mile long.

Funding almost certainly is available because bids for the south half of the U.S. 93 Alternate Route — the stretch from U.S. 93 South to U.S. 2 West — came in lower than expected, Lynch said.

Ames Construction of Utah won the construction project from U.S. 2 to Airport Road with its $12.5 million bid, below the engineer’s estimate of $16.1 million. Knife River of Kalispell won the project from Airport Road to U.S. 93 South with its $8.2 million bid.

Before bids were opened last fall, Lynch had said the engineer’s estimate for the entire south-half bypass was between $34 million and $38 million.

Based on that, the Ames and Knife River bids left at least $13 million in the budget for other pieces of the overall bypass project.

(Although land acquisition is well under way for the north half of the bypass, the segment from U.S. 2 West to U.S. 93 North at West Reserve Drive won’t be built until a new allocation of federal highway dollars is approved.)

Next up, the highway department is scheduled to open bids on May 20 for widening U.S. 2 from the bypass to the bottom of Hartt Hill west of Kalispell. The money spent there will determine when the connector road can proceed with bidding.

The connector is a continuation of Hutton Ranch Road which, in turn, continues as Reserve Loop west of U.S. 93. Built in 2007, Reserve Loop runs from U.S. 93 northwest past Glacier High School to West Reserve Drive and Stillwater Road.

“Because of the way the first two projects came in — depending on the Highway 2 project — we will have enough to buy all the right of way,” Lynch said. “And if we do, we will have enough left to bid the project.”

The project will include slight improvements to West Reserve Drive from the U.S. 93 junction to the connector road outlet.

Wal-mart Stores Inc. is spending its own money to get the process started.

The corporation will upgrate Hutton Ranch Road to four lanes from U.S. 93 to the new Walmart a couple of blocks east. With an expected 30-day construction schedule, the road should be in place when the new store opens in June.

The highway department’s connector road starts where Walmart’s road leaves off.

The preliminary plan is to have the connector curve northeast from that junction and hug the east property lines of the shopping area before it connects to West Reserve west of the Stillwater River bridge.

Design work is not finished but, as with Reserve Loop, it will be a full four-lane.

Wal-Mart also is responsible for building left-turn lanes and sequencing left-turn signal lights all four ways at the U.S. 93 intersection with Hutton Ranch Road, Lynch said.

Meanwhile, good weather has made for robust progress on the two projects that make up the south half of the U.S. 93 Alternate Route.

Knife River to the south and Ames Construction to the north have been shoring up soils for bridge and waterway channel work, crucial preliminary steps to actual road-bed construction.

On the Web:

www.kalispellbypass.com

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