Road could threaten Trails

Developers to seek revamp of subdivision

Willow Creek developers Wayne and Hubert Turner may go head-to-head with Rails-to-Trails organizers at Tuesday night's Kalispell City Planning Board meeting.

The Turners are returning to the Planning Board with yet another revamp of their 140-acre subdivision on Foy's Lake Road near the new U.S. 93 Alternate Route. Its public hearing is scheduled Tuesday night.

This latest request is for 471 lots, composed of 397 single-family lots and 74 townhouse lots. It's slightly more dense than the 455 lots their redesigned planned-unit development proposed in February. They initially sought 711 lots, then won approval for 531 in December 2007.

But it's the central road that funnels traffic from the middle of the subdivision north to U.S. 2 West that is causing friction with the trails group.

The way the Turners propose it now, that road would slice directly through Great Northern Rail Trail, a stretch of old railroad bed converted to a biking and pedestrian trail that connects Kalispell with Kila.

Hubert Turner submitted a design last week that would cut away the grade on the trail so it would slope down to the road he plans to build, rather than building his road to an at-grade crossing with the trail which has been endorsed by county and city planners.

Trail supporter Mark Crowley said Turner's new plan would slope the trail seven feet below its current grade on both sides of the new road.

"The driving force is pedestrian and user safety," Crowley said. "By cutting down into the grade, you're asking parents with strollers and all the other users to go down a 350-foot grade, stop for traffic, cross and start from a dead stop back up the other 350-foot grade."

That plan would take 750 feet right-of-way from the trail instead of the 200 feet that Crowley said the Turners have been granted.

The trails group is asking instead for a pedestrian bridge that crosses over the road.

"With a bridge you still would have a certain grade," Crowley explained, "but you don't have to sacrifice momentum."

Kalispell Senior Planner Sean Conrad said the Rails to Trails group had concerns about the crossing at the Planning Board's work session. He said that trails chairman Richard Siderius attended that meeting, and recounted that Hubert Turner had met with the group in October 2009.

At that meeting, Planning Board members asked the Turners to get together with the trails group and work out a mutually agreeable plan.

"It will be a fairly busy street compared with the other streets along the trail," Conrad said. "We were looking to talk to Hubert and try to work with him, come up with a plan, have them tell him their concerns and see if he would come up with anything to help."

Conrad said he talked with Turner the day after the work session, asking him to work out the crossing issue before the May 11 public hearing. He followed up with a letter to Turner a week later, he said.

"We expressed our concern," Conrad said. "The county already talked to Hubert, saying this is the crossing we want to see - an at-grade crossing. And I talked to the county and the state saying these are the signs we want to see."

Montana Department of Transportation bought five acres from the Turners when it was acquiring right-of-way for the bypass, and granted them an easement for their road. Crowley said the purchase price was $5.5 million.

Conrad said Turner has been communicating with the county, but not with the city since the April 12 work session.

"Since then, we've been trying to get Hubert to the table to work out a plan for everybody," Crowley said. "Last Monday he gave us another design. He handed me a piece of paper and asked me to take it to the (Rails to Trails) meeting that night."

Conrad said he had spoken with Turner earlier in the day when Turner presented the new design to him, too.

"Mr. Turner didn't come with a desire to have a meeting with Rails to Trails until this Monday morning," Conrad said last week, "when he gave me a revised cross-section of what the slopes would be on the trails. He had been to the county with the same information. I told Hubert he should go to the (trails) meeting that night with the same information."

Rather than attending that meeting last week, Turner chose to set up a 10 a.m. meeting today among trail representatives, county and city planners, and the Department of Transportation. Their goal will be to work out a plan than can be presented at Tuesday's public hearing.

The meeting starts at 7 p.m. Tuesday in City Hall Council Chambers.

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