Flathead County Planning Board tables decision on proposed Bigfork development

Three hours of public comment, discussion and debate were not enough for the Flathead County Planning Board to reach a decision on whether or not to recommend the approval of the planned North Shore Woods housing development as they met in Kalispell last week.

With an overflow crowd keeping many out of the meeting room, the board spent more than two hours deliberating whether or not to grant a zone change for the project before tabling the decision and later tabled two additional requests from Longbow Land Partners, Inc. and its representative, WGM Group.

Located between Peaceful Drive and Bigfork Stage Road (the area behind Dairy Queen to the south and El Topo Cantina to the north), the currently vacant area is proposed to be developed by Longbow Land Partners, LLC of Jackson, Wyoming.

According to a planned unit development overlay application filed with Flathead County Planning and Zoning on March 30, the company intends to build 125 single-family units on the property and is asking the county to cut the required lot size in half to do so.

The Bigfork Land Use Advisory Committee (BLUAC) voted to recommend denial of the three proposals, but the Planning Board was quick to point out that BLUAC’s decision is merely a recommendation, and nothing more.

“The Planning Board was a long meeting and it was very frustrating,” BLUAC Chair Susan Johnson said. “I am very disappointed that the public’s input didn’t seem to have any weight at this meeting.”

The Planning Board will consider the three requests once again at its Sept. 13 meeting, when the board should decide whether or not to recommend the approval of the requests to the Flathead County commissioners, who have the final say in the matter.