Boarding house wins approval in Whitefish

City wants more zoning flexibility for multifamily housing

By LYNNETTE HINTZE

Daily Inter Lake

A plan to create a boarding house in Whitefish got unanimous support from the City Council last week as the community continues to struggle with providing affordable housing for workers in the hospitality industry.

Reisch Family Partnership had asked for a conditional-use permit to transform the former Independent High School on Park Avenue into an eight-room boarding house. Dale Reisch, whose family business owns Montana Tap House and has other business interests, and Pat Carloss, owner of Tupelo Grille, are partners in the project to create housing space for their workers.

“We know we need to provide a good environment for the people who stay there, and if we do that we’re sure it will be a good environment for the neighbors,” Reisch told the council during a Jan. 3 public hearing.

Reisch also said he and Carloss had met with Chris Hyatt of The Landlord property management agency, and Hyatt offered to assume the management of the boarding house.

Before approving the conditional-use permit, the council removed a condition that would have required an on-site manager to enforce the rules of occupancy. The city planning staff was concerned about the enforceability of occupancy rules in a private residence and asked the council to consider striking that condition.

The Whitefish Boarding House project does not meet the textbook definition of a boarding house because rental terms will be for more than 30 days and no meals will be provided. Planning Director David Taylor the boarding house definition seemed to be the closest to what the applicant was proposing, but the city is in the process of tweaking zoning regulations to better accommodate workforce housing.

On Jan. 19 the Whitefish Planning Board will hold a public hearing to consider a request by the city to add multifamily residential as a permitted use on the second floor in the secondary business district. The proposal also would add multifamily residential and workforce housing as conditional uses in the secondary business district. It further would create a parking standard for workforce housing and add a definition for workforce housing.

The city’s proposal to create more zoning flexibility for multifamily housing comes on the heels of a comprehensive affordable housing study completed last month that indicated Whitefish need to add nearly 1,000 housing units by 2020 to make up for a current shortage of available workforce housing and plan for future needs.

The need for more workforce housing has been discussed in Whitefish for years, but in the last few years became more of a priority for the Whitefish Chamber of Commerce, which began looking for solutions, starting with a needs assessment and plan for how to address the housing shortage.

Features editor Lynnette Hintze may be reached at 758-4421 or lhintze@dailyinterlake.com.