Agency recommends partial funding for carpet-store project

After several weeks of discussion among Urban Renewal Agency members, a request for tax increment money to help reopen the Kelly-Main Street building goes before the Kalispell City Council on April 1.

Paul Roybal is renovating the 88-year-old building and intends to move in his carpet and flooring business. The building has been vacant at the busy corner of Center and Main streets for most of a decade.

Urban Renewal Agency members on Wednesday voted 3-0 to recommend that the City Council provide up to $72,961 of support for the project from the West Side Tax Increment Finance District.

That would pay up to 50 percent of the $67,513 cost to renovate the building’s historic stone pillar and window facade and up to 50 percent of the $37,065 cost to run a fire-flow water line to the building that could then be shared with neighboring building owners who want to install fire suppression systems.

The recommendation also offers Roybal up to $20,000 of 3 percent loan support for eligible rehabilitation and code compliance costs.

Kalispell’s planning department and community and economic development department staffers pitched Roybal’s application as a pilot project to Urban Renewal Agency members.

It’s the first application for funding since Kalispell extended the tax increment finance district’s life for 25 years and enlarged its boundary to include a 365-acre railroad corridor targeted for revitalization.

And it comes as staffers are scrambling to craft policies and programs to handle, score and prioritize demands for limited tax increment money and channel it to accomplish lofty redevelopment goals — both public and private — laid out in the Kalispell Core Area Revitalization Plan.

That policy-crafting process continues in coming weeks.

But after several meetings, Urban Renewal Agency members felt far enough along to make a recommendation for Roybal’s request as they continue to work with city staffers to massage draft program documents that eventually also will go before the council for its blessing.

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