Promising plans for Bright View

North Kalispell continues to fill in this year, with everything from a 100-room Hilton Homewood Suites to a new Cabela’s store, new Glacier Eye Clinic building and half-mile stretch of highway bypass in the works.

Glacier Eye Clinic’s new building on Section 36 school trust land along Reserve Loop is a sign of more things to come. It’s the first project in a larger Bright View Professional parcel that state officials have put together for more development in the area.

The clinic’s 22,000-square-foot building will occupy four of the 32 acres on the Bright View site. Bright View includes land between Reserve Loop, West Reserve Drive and the northernmost segment of the U.S. 93 Alternate Route that’s set to open by next summer.

And with Glacier Eye Clinic going in, interest in Bright View already is growing.

“Now that people see dirt moving around, that’s stimulating more interest,” said Mike Collins, program manager for the Northwest Land Office of the Department of State Lands. “In the last month we’ve had three different parties come through and talk to us.”

Glacier Eye Clinic entered a 40-year lease for the school trust land and plans to move into its new building by April 2014. The clinic is presently located at 160 Heritage Way in a building owned by Kalispell Regional Healthcare.

“We are excited for our new facility, which will allow us to grow with the needs of the valley and Northwest Montana,” Dr. Mark Remington said in a press release about the clinic’s project. “We are adding a children’s eye surgeon this summer and will continue to work closely with our optometric colleagues, community physicians and partner hospitals to deliver the best surgical and medical care to our patients and neighbors.”

Steve Frye, manager of the Northwest Land Office in Kalispell, said the parties worked together for about a year to craft a lease and launch Bright View. “We’re delighted to have Glacier Eye Clinic as a partner in our first project in the Bright View development,” he said.

The Northwest Land Office is working on engineering plans for the rest of Bright View. The site is broken into about 11 lots. “That will answer some questions about how we’ll handle sewage and stormwater, which are the two really outstanding issues for us,” Collins said. “We hope to have that work done in 60 to 90 days.”

Plans for the Bright View site envision professional office space and limited retail and commercial space. Frye anticipates the Bright View area to be leased and developed over the next three to six years.

That will bring even more activity to the 640 acres of Section 36 school trust land in Kalispell.

Covered by alfalfa fields and leased as grazing land 20 years ago, Section 36 has sprouted some of the city’s busiest commercial areas and grown into one of Montana’s most lucrative pieces of school trust land.

It has generated millions of dollars for school trust coffers through the sale of land and permanent easements. And with heavy commercial development in the section’s southeast quarter — with Lowe’s, Costco, McDonald’s, Applebee’s, Wells Fargo Bank, Starbucks, Famous Dave’s BBQ, MedNorth Urgent Care and a Holiday Inn Express — its various leases generated $401,000 for the school trust last year.

That compares to the statewide average of about $10,240 per section of school trust land.

Meanwhile, state officials continue to work with The Kroenke Group to negotiate a commercial lease for Victory Commons. That 28-acre site includes land Kidsports has agreed to release in exchange for a one-time payment.

The Kroenke Group also is building a 42,000-square-foot Cabela’s in the third phase of the Spring Prairie shopping center, which is located in the northeast corner of Section 36. While building that new store — which is anticipated to open this fall — crews also are preparing the entire site with building pads and parking lots and landscaping for nine other stores that the Missouri-based developer aims to eventually attract.

Collins estimated that about half of the land in Section 36 is now developed or committed to some definitive plan. “I don’t know if that means it’s half full or half empty,” he said.

For more information about Bright View Professional or sites available, contact Steve Lorch, a land use planner for the Northwest Land Office, at 751-2262.

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