Best chance for better downtown

Will demolishing an abandoned building and replacing it with a parking lot be enough to extend the life of Kalispell’s embattled West Side Tax Increment Finance District?

That’s the ambitious albeit convoluted proposal being considered by the Kalispell City Council as the clock ticks down on the tax district.

Under the $1 million proposal, the city would swap property it owns north of the former Gateway West Mall for the former Gateway Cinema Movie Theater site, a vacant and flood-prone property owned by developer Phil Harris.

It then would raze the theater and build a 255-space public parking lot in its place, using tax-increment money to pay the debt.

The immediate question when considering this idea is: Why would we want a parking lot that likely isn’t going to serve any immediate need?

The bottom line is that bonding a project such as this would extend the life of the tax-increment district for years (otherwise the district sunsets in March) and allow the district to be expanded. And that expansion is seen as pivotally important in redevelopment dreams well beyond the west-side district.

It also fulfills the city’s lease obligation to provide another 55 parking spaces for TeleTech, removes a blighted building beset with water problems and gives access to a landlocked piece of property.

Is all that worth a million dollars?

It could be, if the parking-lot plan enables the TIF to remain in place to fund any number of possible projects, ranging from removing railroad tracks through town to replacing aging infrastructure.

This might be a case where we have to hold our noses and endorse the parking lot. It’s not an ideal project, to be sure, but it may be all that the city of Kalispell has left as time runs out, and the alternative — ending tax-increment financing as a development tool — may be worse.

As questionable as this whole plan is, it may well be the only option we have available for keeping the tax-increment district going and making it a springboard for development in Kalispell.

But what’s important, if all the pieces fall into place, is that the district not just be satisfied with a parking lot. If the city is going through all this trouble to preserve the TIF district, then it is vital that active and ongoing steps be taken to make a real project fall into place to better the greater downtown Kalispell area. Getting rid of the railroad tracks would be a huge improvement, but there are many other ways to improve the district as well. Let’s hope that we don’t have to wait 20 years and then start all over again from square one.