Kalispell getting update on Kidsports easement

At a work session tonight, Kalispell City Council discusses ongoing efforts to buy a permanent easement for Kidsports’ athletic fields, which sit on school trust land along U.S. 93.

Kalispell, Kidsports and the Montana Department of Natural Resources have been working on the project for several years.

The State Land Board has approved a memorandum of understanding that lays out terms for a permanent easement for Kidsports. Those terms are:

• $2.29 million for the 123-acre Kidsports site, appraised at $18,515 an acre;

• Kidsports has up to five years to purchase the easement and can make five payments, one per year;

• The first payment window is Dec. 31, 2012 and February 28 of each following year;

• The minimum payment is $100,000;

• Also due each year is a sliding “option” payment ranging from 1 percent in the first year to 2 percent in the final year of the remaining balance over the five year period.

Kidsports representatives will attend tonight’s work session to discuss terms for the permanent easement and how it fits a long-term development strategy.

Applying through the city of Kalispell, the nonprofit youth sports organization entered a 40-year lease for 134 acres of school trust land in 1996.

The concern driving this push for a permanent easement is a mandatory mid-lease reappraisal that threatens to make Kidsports’ annual lease payment unaffordable.

Progressing on a parallel track is the Victory Commons initiative. It makes available for development 28 acres of school trust land at the corner of U.S. 93 and Reserve Loop, just north of the Kidsports fields.

About a dozen of those acres are land Kidsports has agreed to release from its lease. In exchange, Kidsports would get a one-time payment from the developer for the right to use that land, giving it a jump on fundraising efforts.

Kalispell, Kidsports and DNRC selected Goldberg Properties and The Kroenke Group to develop the Victory Commons site.

Dan Johns, the director of Kidsports, said his organization has a tentative agreement with the developers in regard to that one-time payment. But that payment depends on the developers successfully negotiating a commercial land lease with the state.

DNRC officials have said they want to have a proposed commercial land lease before the State Land Board in January.

Reporter Tom Lotshaw may be reached at 758-4483 or by email at tlotshaw@dailyinterlake.com.