Evergreen mobile-home park plan scrapped
The Flathead County Board of Adjustment struck a fatal blow to a proposed mobile-home park in Evergreen Tuesday with a tie vote that prevents the developers from getting the conditional-use permit needed for the project to move forward.
Property owners Michael V. Seaman and Garry Seaman needed the conditional-use permit to allow a manufactured home park within the Evergreen Zoning District. They want to build West Evergreen Estates, a 122-lot mobile-home subdivision on 33 acres along West Evergreen Drive, west of Evergreen Junior High School.
“Because this [conditional-use permit] is not approved, I don’t think the commissioners will consider the subdivision, because the use for the land is not approved,” county Planning Director Mark Mussman told the audience at the Board of Adjustment public hearing.
According to a Planning Office memorandum sent to the commissioners’ office on Thursday, the Seamans won’t continue with their application, and a May 14 meeting with the commissioners has been canceled.
The developers can’t reapply for another conditional-use permit for a year, unless they submit sufficient new evidence that could better support their application for a permit, Mussman said.
“I can’t imagine what sufficient new evidence they could come up with,” he added.
The potential for decreasing property values and the anticipated increase in traffic along West Evergreen Drive framed most of the opposition from neighbors.
Board of Adjustment members Cal Dyck and Ole Netteberg voted in favor of the permit, while Gina Klempel and Roger Noble voted against it. Board member Mark Hash was absent.
Nobel deliberated for several minutes before casting his vote, weighing the many concerns.
“I can understand the neighbors’ and developers’ concerns,” Noble said. “I have to decide tomorrow morning what I’m going to look at in the mirror.
“We know (the proposed subdivision) can have more units, and we know they can come in with an alternative plan if we vote to deny,” Noble continued. “[The neighbors] are concerned about property valuations and I can totally understand that, to have that happen to someone who’s invested their life into their home.”
Netteberg lamented the inadequacy of West Evergreen Drive.
“The only thing we can do to the road is to talk to the commissioners about signage,” he said, adding that increased law enforcement along the road would be good, too.
The planning process for West Evergreen Estates has been a bumpy ride.
The Board of Adjustment held a public hearing on the conditional-use permit in March and approved it, only to have to rehear the case on Tuesday because the audiotape of the hearing malfunctioned and didn’t include the board’s discussion and rationale for its vote.
Meanwhile, the Flathead County Planning Board split its vote 3-3 following a public hearing in April, and forwarded the proposal to the county commissioners without a recommendation.
A year ago the Seamans were granted a zone change that switched the zoning on the property from suburban and one-family residential to two-family residential zoning that would accommodate the mobile-home park.
While the Seamans were proposing a density of 3.69 dwelling units per acre on their 33-acre tract, the underlying zoning now will allow up to 11 units per acre.
There has been overwhelming neighborhood opposition to the mobile-home park, largely because property owners in the area fear their property values will decrease significantly with a mobile-home park in the vicinity. Traffic on West Evergreen Drive was another paramount concern.
Features Editor Lynnette Hintze may be reached at 758-4421 or lhintze@dailyinterlake.com.