West Glacier growing pains focus of mitigation plan

Stakeholders in West Glacier, Glacier National Park, the greater Flathead Valley and elsewhere recently released the first draft of their West Glacier Vision Plan, a document that aims to establish a new vision for future growth and expansion in the West Glacier Area.

The driving force behind the plan’s creation was the exploding popularity of Glacier National Park, which has attracted millions of locals and tourists to its gates in recent years. In particular, the draft, which took more than a year to create, points to 2016 as the year that West Glacier residents “woke up to the reality that the number of visitors [to the park] was more than the population of the city of Chicago,” and they were all funneling through West Glacier’s two-lane “Main Street,” which serves as the shove off point to the Going-to-the-Sun Road.

That year alone, nearly 3 million people visited the park — a number that would be topped one year later in 2017. And by association, the quaint communities surrounding the park including West Glacier, Coram, and Hungry Horse, experienced a boom in activity as well.

Up until then, the draft notes, those communities and their residents and businesses had been able to absorb and manage increases in visitation. But that’s no longer the case, as West Glacier has struggled to preserve its identity over the years amid the growth, an expansion that for decades has been managed by the Canyon Area Land Use Regulatory System (CALURS).

The 33-page plan, adopted by Flathead County in 1994, plan gave birth to local citizen review panels for planning and zoning matters and adopted regulations for non-conforming uses, among other things. CALURS encompasses West Glacier and other towns nearby that make up what is widely known as the Gateway to Glacier.

And now, the West Glacier Vision Plan, created with input from local business leads, property owners, county officials and others, essentially plans to build on CALURS and other previous planning efforts, by creating a roadmap for future growth and development.

“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,” notes the 54-page document that is available for review on the Flathead County Planning and Zoning website. “The plan is intended to be both visionary and practical.”

Stakeholders for the project include the West Glacier Preservation Association, Xanterra, The Glacier Conservancy, University of Montana, Kalispell Chamber of Commerce, various Flathead County department leads, local business owners, residents and many others.

The groups, according to Mary McClelland, met regularly throughout 2020, both in-person and online, to lay the foundation for the plan and to better understand one another's vision for West Glacier.

"The vision planning process has been a positive forward-thinking experience. Resident, business and agency participants came from divergent backgrounds and interests, in a very difficult time, with the challenges of covid, and we were able to discover shared values, which is the first step to collaboration and partnering to achieve goals for an envisioned future," said McClelland, the West Glacier community organizer for the project. "With improved communications channels, community-driven actions underway and more outlined, we see a road to how we can work together for a better future."

AFTER SEVERAL gatherings among stakeholders and public engagement seminars, five primary goals for future growth emerged: preserve community character and sense of place, create a safe and resilient community, enhance community communications and participation, support sustainable outdoor recreation opportunities and provide seamless transportation connections.

Upon determining the primary goals for the plan, which is considered a working document and is subject to be revisited over time, the team established the action areas and strategies specific to each objective.

For example the plan’s top goal is to preserve West Glacier’s character and sense of place. Among other things, the hopes behind this objective are to maintain the area’s landscape as an extension to Glacier National Park and Flathead National Forest, celebrate the area’s historical context, wildlife and natural resources, and develop the community in a way that supports both year-round residents and tourists.

Those principles will be achieved through four action area priorities. Focus items include the preservation of an authentic, non-pretentious West Glacier, maintaining a “minimal level” of amenities and development and a unique, small-town feel that is pedestrian-friendly.

And for each of these action areas, the plan also offers a lengthy list of ideas for how each can be accomplished. For example, in order to maintain that “authentic, non-pretentious West Glacier” feel, the plan suggests developments be “integrated and scaled appropriately” with mountains and recreational amenities such as trail systems, bike lanes and the Flathead River.

The document provides this level of depth for each of its five primary goals.

And each of those undertakings positions West Glacier to become “a nexus for recreation, with a high quality of life, healthy lifestyles and a future of resiliency and sustainability,” according to a press release.

MOVING FORWARD, the plan must undergo a formal adoption process at the county level, which can be accomplished either by it being adopted as an addendum to CALURS or as a separate neighborhood plan.

Those at the helm believe it should become the latter, partially because they followed guidelines laid out by the Flathead County Growth Policy for forming a neighborhood plan, and also because the document focuses almost exclusively on the West Glacier area and the west entrance to Glacier National Park.

Being adopted as a neighborhood plan also would require the Middle Canyon Land Use Advisory Committee to hold a public meeting on the plan. The committee would then forward a recommendation to the county Planning Board, which would then forward its own recommendation to the Flathead County commissioners for final approval.

The draft is currently undergoing more public review. The entire document, as well as methods for submitting public comment, can be found at https://flathead.mt.gov/planning_zoning/

Reporter Kianna Gardner may be reached at 758-4407 or kgardner@dailyinterlake.com