Kalispell City Council on Monday night took its first look at a new land use plan aimed at steering development over the next 20 years in one of Montana’s fastest growing cities.  

Councilors deliberated over how the document should guide future housing and commercial development, including potential revisions to the future land use map to ease zoning barriers, changes to the public comment process required by state law and ways to protect the sandhill crane habitat on the city’s west side from development.  

Much of the document — crafted by city staff with the guidance of the Planning Commission and input from the public — echoes the growth policy Council adopted in 2017.  

“The land use plan and how its structured, is very similar to what the growth policy is that we’ve been operating under the last 10 years,” said Assistant Development Services Director PJ Sorensen. “The big change in the plan itself was much more focus on housing, because housing has become a bigger issue statewide.”  

The Montana Land Use Planning Act passed in 2023 required 10 cities, including Kalispell, Whitefish and Columbia Falls, to draft a new guiding document that focuses on increasing housing supply through zoning and subdivision regulation reforms.  

City Hall anticipates 23,000 new residents by 2045 and will need up to 10,000 additional housing units — about 500 per year — to combat high housing costs and low rental vacancy rates, according to the land use plan. Over the last roughly five years, the city has approved 7,000 units, but only 2,000 of those have been built, Sorensen said.   

To boost housing supply, the 2023 state law requires the city to adopt five of 14 proposed zoning regulations. Regulations supported by the Planning Commission included allowing a duplex or second home wherever a single-family residence is allowed and designating high density development near public transit.  

City officials have long taken issue with the law’s limits on public input for site-specific construction. Annexations and initial zoning will still require public hearings, but subdivisions and conditional use permits will be approved by staff.  

City Manager Jarod Nygren predicted the change will, in reality, delay the development process.  

“The process has gotten more disjointed, clearly less transparent, because there’s not at as much public process, but now, the Council will be looking at an annexation, initial zoning but the community sees no plat,” he said.  

A preliminary plat outlines the initial design for the planned development, which under the new law will only be approved administratively.  A district court judge in Gallatin County over the spring found the provision unconstitutional, but the decision is under appeal with the state Supreme Court.  

COUNCILORS ALSO considered a request from the Flathead Land Trust to remove a large chunk of the West Valley area used by migrating sandhill cranes from the city’s growth policy.  

“They use the same places each year to nest, same places to winter, same places to stage on their migrations. And the West Valley happens to be one of the areas they use every year to stage on their migration,” said Laura Katzman, a land protection specialist with the nonprofit.  

Mayor Ryan Hunter proposed striking the land currently designated for suburban residential use from the future land use map. He said he would not want the city’s name stamped on the destruction of the wildlife habitat and dismissed the concern that if the city doesn’t develop on the land, the county will. 

“The argument that we should destroy it faster and more thoroughly, just because the county is going to do it, isn’t an argument for me to include it in our urban area and allow it for development,” Hunter said.  

Councilors Jed Fisher and Sid Daoud said the only way to effectively preserve the land is through a conservation easement. 

“Some activism there to get this into the hands of one of those entities that will protect this land now and into the future by taking it off the board as far as being in anybody’s growth plan is the real answer,” Daoud said.  

Nygren recommended against removing the designation because of the extensive planning effort that the city underwent in 2007.   

HUNTER AND Councilor Wes Walker also hoped to rework the city’s future land use map to welcome more types of uses. Walker wanted more urban mixed-use zoning areas, which are more flexible in what can be developed there, rather than limiting areas to suburban homes.    

Hunter noted that developers routinely receive approval for projects that depart from the growth policy through planned unit developments, so broadening zoning options in undeveloped areas would more accurately match the variety of housing the city already permits.   

“If this map is going to be part of the plan, then we ... basically tell the public what to expect with the direction we’re going with future planning,” Hunter said. 

Councilor Sam Nunnally argued that clear zoning boundaries give business owners the predictability they need to know where to invest. 

Because the land use plan is a living document that can be updated, Daoud emphasized that larger and more time-consuming revisions to the plan can be tabled and looked at after the required deadline to adopt the plan by May 2026.  

“We need to get this in. We can continue working on it forever,” Daoud said.  

Council plans to continue holding work sessions on the plan before voting on whether to adopt it.   

Reporter Jack Underhill can be reached at 758-4407 and [email protected].