West Glacier Vision Plan offers guide for growth

The heavily traveled Going-to-the-Sun Road serves as the west entrance to Glacier National Park, but it's also West Glacier's main street. It's a conundrum that has put the West Glacier community in a struggle to save its small-town soul amid burgeoning park visitation and the accompanying impacts.

Now there's a plan to address and guide future growth and expansion.

The West Glacier Vision Plan was rolled out in draft form in March, and then won approval from the Middle Canyon Land Use Advisory Committee, which unanimously recommended the plan be adopted as an addendum to the Canyon Plan.

The Flathead County Planning Board will weigh in on the plan following a public hearing at 6 p.m. Wednesday in the second-floor conference room of the South Campus Building, 40 11th St. W. in Kalispell. The Planning Board's recommendation then will be forwarded to the Flathead County commissioners for final approval.

The draft took more than a year to assemble, and notes 2016 was the year when West Glacier residents "woke up to the reality that the number of visitors [to Glacier] was more than the population of the city of Chicago," and all of those travelers use the two-lane road that cuts through their town. In 2017, Glacier visitation topped 3.31 million.

West Glacier isn't the only gateway town that struggles with growth and the impacts of tourism, the plan notes.

"Residents look at other gateway communities and observe conditions that West Glacier doesn't have — and doesn't want," the draft plan states. "When a gateway community had yielded to the pressures of an increasing tourist population and impatient development, the town no longer had the same safe and comfortable charger for those that lived there — or for the visitors either."

THE VISION plan builds on the 1994 Canyon Plan and Canyon Area Land Use Regulatory System that have guided land-use planning for the West Glacier area.

Business leaders and property owners, along with a number of stakeholders that included the West Glacier Preservation Association, park concessionaire Xanterra, the Glacier National Park Conservancy, the University of Montana, the Kalispell Chamber of Commerce and local officials, all had input into the vision plan.

"The purpose of this plan is to identify key community values for West Glacier that can guide planning and policy improvements, aid in decision-making on community character, land use, development and redevelopment, public services and facilities, economic development and transportation," the draft states.

To that end, it outlines a number of goals and related action plans. At the top of the list is preserving West Glacier's community character and sense of place.

The aesthetic of West Glacier's main street is attributed largely to the Lundgren family and David Thompson, who established and preserved the Swiss Chalet mountain village architectural style, according to the draft plan. In fact, that architectural authenticity and the town's small-scale development earned the Lundgren family an award in 1987 from the U.S. Department of Interior, which recognized the approach of blending the town's character with Glacier National Park.

"For nearly 70 years the [Lundgren] family's operational approach made it work and it became part of the experience for visitors heading to Glacier National Park," the draft notes.

A pivotal change took place in 2014 when the Lundgren family sold its West Glacier holdings to Glacier Park Inc., the former concessionaire for the park for more than 30 years. GPI's parent company, Pursuit, has asserted its intent to preserve the West Glacier's small-town qualities, the plan notes.

The draft plan outlines several opportunities to enhance visitor connectivity, such as additional pedestrian connections to and along West Glacier's main street, pedestrian-oriented development, completing the Gateway to Glacier Trail, and a regional transit center.

To accomplish the goal of providing "seamless transportation connections that consider both people and wildlife connectivity," the draft suggests a number of action items to address traffic and congestion.

The main action items are working with the Montana Department of Transportation to perform a safety analysis and traffic study, adding a left-turn lane on U.S. 2 into the KOA campground, addressing traffic confusion over the merge lane along U.S. 2 turning west from the Sun Road, and developing wayfinding and business signage along West Glacier's main street and along U.S. 2.

The West Glacier Vision Plan can be found at flathead.mt.gov/planning_zoning

News editor Lynnette Hintze may be reached at 406-758-4421 or lhintze@dailyinterlake.com.