EDITORIAL: Cities planning for summer rush

Summer always brings with it a bit of a conundrum when it arrives, finally, in the Flathead Valley. We wait longingly through months of gray days for those glorious three-plus months of pure outdoor pleasure. The valley’s challenge, though, has always been how best to accommodate the throngs of visitors who also have waited longingly for their very own Flathead or Glacier National Park experience.

We’re encouraged to see our cities in the North Valley already looking ahead to the summer tourist season this year and next, making arrangements to put their best foot forward.

The Whitefish Chamber of Commerce is taking the lead in finding alternative parking solutions for the upcoming summer season because two big construction projects have eaten into the city’s parking inventory in a big way. Between the Firebrand Hotel construction across from Whitefish Middle School and the City Hall/parking structure project just two blocks away, more than 100 parking spots have been eliminated.

It may be two full summers before the parking garage is completed in Whitefish, leaving business leaders scrambling to secure every possible nook and cranny for parking. The Chamber has come up with some innovative ideas that involve using school parking lots and the city’s snow lot, and we encourage the community to work together to give our visitors the best experience possible.

Columbia Falls plans to take advantage of a planned 2017 replacement of the deteriorating bridge on U.S. 2 over the South Fork, part of the main thoroughfare connecting the Flathead and Glacier Park. The city plans to erect new signs that will direct motorists up Nucleus Avenue — Columbia Falls’ main street — and toward the North Fork as a scenic route.

Touting the community as the “Gateway to Glacier,” Columbia Falls’ business leaders have worked hard to divert traffic through town and to downtown businesses, and this will give the city a captive audience, so to speak, as vehicles flow through the city’s core. Columbia Falls City Manager Susan Nicosia, a dynamic leader in spurring economic growth in the city, is working with state Sen. Dee Brown and other officials on nailing down grant money to pave a few more miles of the North Fork Road, another move that would spur traffic through Columbia Falls.

We’re fortunate to live in an area that provides the wealth of summer activities we all enjoy, and we’re also blessed to have a solid corps of organizations and local government entities — from chambers of commerce to convention and visitor bureaus and mindful city governments — working on our behalf to keep the local economy thriving. That benefits not only our visitors but also everyone who calls this place home.