Road work paves way for Walmart

Work on upgrading Hutton Ranch Road — which by the first of June will be the main road into the new Walmart Supercenter — started at the crack of 8 o’clock Wednesday night.

By Thursday morning, crews with general contractor LHC Inc., had torn out the existing median strip to make way for a narrower one, pulled up the first couple of blocks of sidewalk along the south side of Hutton Ranch Road and graded away the sod and top few inches of soil immediately west of the Walmart entrance.

They will continue widening the road and installing other upgrades at least five nights a week between 8 p.m. and 6 a.m. when traffic should be the lightest.

Minor work, perhaps relocating a fire hydrant or rebuilding sidewalks, is likely to be under way during daytime hours.

Kalispell Deputy Director of Public Works Frank Castles said LHC’s contract requires at least two lanes to remain open to traffic during construction. Even so, the Montana Department of Transportation cautioned drivers to expect delays at the main entrance to Hutton Ranch Plaza.

Plans are to have the rebuilt road open and the necessary traffic lights on U.S. 93 operating by the time the new store opens its doors.

Walmart officials did not return calls, but Hutton Ranch Plaza developer Phil Harris confirmed the store’s opening is set for the first part of June.

Harris gave a rundown of the road project, which is being funded entirely by Walmart.

The improvements, being built to state Department of Transportation standards, will run from the U.S. 93 intersection with Hutton Ranch Road to 100 or 150 feet east of Walmart’s entrance.

The road is being widened to provide two lanes for eastbound and two lanes for westbound traffic at the main entrance into Hutton Ranch. Eastbound traffic will have a third, right-turn-only lane to enter into Walmart. Westbound traffic will have three lanes at the highway — to turn left or right onto U.S. 93 or continue straight onto Reserve Loop.

Harris said the traffic lights at the highway will be modified for a protected left turn from Hutton Ranch for traffic heading south onto the highway. Another protected left turn lane will be installed for southbound traffic coming off U.S. 93 into Hutton Ranch.

The contractor is reducing the size of the median to give more of a “throat” area at the highway intersection, he said.

All conduits and bases are being installed now in anticipation of a future four-way traffic light that the Department of Transportation may put in at the Walmart entrance.

“Everything being described here is MDT’s responsibility, but Walmart is paying for everything,” Harris said. Not only do company officials want patrons to be comfortable driving that road, he said, but they also want to have the road done for the store opening.

“They could have decided to wait and let MDT do it, if they wished,” he said.

“You could ask why. When I built Hutton Ranch Road, I built it with my funds to city specifications and requirements,” he said. “At the same time I granted, without compensation, to the city the right-of-way in case they needed to do these upgrades later.”

The condition for granting that right-of-way, Harris said, was that if the city or the Department of Transportation decided that future improvements were needed, it would be at their expense. Instead, Walmart is footing the bill.

Castles pointed out the road is coming at virtually no public cost.

“There’s absolutely no taxpayer money involved in this, other than public employees go out there and inspect,” Castles said.

The final leg in the road system will be the connector road from Walmart north to West Reserve Drive.

“I think there are a lot of people who think the sole purpose of that road is to accommodate the developer of Hutton Ranch Plaza,” Harris said.

“In reality we never had a desire to put this all the way through. The MDT had a design all along to put this through … to facilitate traffic from the loop to the bypass. We were totally complete almost with the development when MDT approached me saying, ‘We want to design this now,’” he said.

The highway department is acquiring land for the connector, which will run behind Hutton Ranch and Mountain View Plaza. Negotiations with Flathead Valley Community College and a handful of other landowners still are moving forward, Department of Transportation Director Jim Lynch said Thursday.

“We’re far enough along in the process that we probably can go to bid this summer,” he said, confirming a projection from earlier this month.

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