Community center plan makes it through BLUAC

After spending years teaching some of Bigfork's most talented youth in the Bigfork Playhouse Children's Theatre, Brach Thomson started to realize that many of the kids had to travel all the way to Kalispell for voice, music or dance lessons.

So Thomson came before the Bigfork Land Use Advisory Committee last Thursday evening asking for a permit for the building — the old Flathead Industries thrift store on Grand Drive — that would play host to just those sorts of things, along with a tutoring area and space for other after school activities.

Thomson was seeking a conditional use permit to operate a community center in R-1 zoning, which is one of the permissible conditional uses.

Property owner Walter Kuhn, who is also the head of the Bigfork Center for the Performing Arts Foundation, told BLUAC that he purchased the property specifically to hold on to it until Thomson could get the programming and funding together to purchase it and start the center.

"I bought the property specifically so no one else would buy it," he said.

One of the potential issues with the site is a lack of parking, though Thomson said he had a verbal agreement with Flathead Bank to utilize some of their parking spots after business hours. Thomson also said that one of the big perks about the location of the building was a lack of need for parking.

"We anticipate that a lot of the kids will come on foot," he said. "They'll be taking classes right out of school."

The building is only a few hundred feet from the edge of the Bigfork Elementary School.

Thomson said the center would also partner with the LEAP after school program that operates out of Crossroads Church to help provide tutoring options for middle school students.

BLUAC chairwoman Shelley Gonzales said she supported the project, but moved to add a condition to ensure that all Americans with Disabilities Act specifications were met.

BLUAC voted 4-0 to approve the conditional use request. The Flathead County Board of Adjustment heard the application on Tuesday evening, June 2. An update will be in next week's Eagle.

The other application for the evening involved a complicated request for updates to the Mill Creek subdivision, which has languished in a state of disrepair for years along Holt Drive.

The application — made by the new owners, including Glacier Bank — requested changes to the Planned Unit Development plan. A PUD is essentially a contract between the community and a developer that exchanges things like increased density for more community control of the project. Once finalized, a PUD is overlaid onto existing zoning and becomes regulatory.

Flathead County Planning and Zoning Office Assistant Director BJ Grieve gave a lengthy explanation of the process, as well as some of the project's history.

Put simply, he said, "this is a unique situation."

The main change from the original PUD involved the applicants requesting to remove a portion about the construction of a clubhouse. Tim Caloway, who owns 24 of the subdivision's 113 lots, said the clubhouse proposed by the development's previous owner would be an onerous endeavor in any economy, much less today.

"A monster clubhouse wasn't necessary at this site at this time in this town," he said.

One of BLUAC's major concerns was that the homeowners' association could sell the lot designated for the clubhouse and thus decrease the development's common area. A condition was added with language to ensure the lot would either be used for a clubhouse, or remain a park.

With the conditions, BLAUC voted 4-0 to recommend approval to the Flathead County Planning Board.