Glacier Mall saga one of bad timing

Eleven years after Wolford Development, of Chattanooga, Tenn., first proposed building a giant shopping mall in the Flathead Valley, the 485-acre site for the proposed mall north of Kalispell has reverted back to the previous owner.

The project has a long and complicated history as it relocated from Evergreen to U.S. 93 north of Reserve Drive. In its most recent incarnation, developers Chad and James “Bucky” Wolford planned to build 600 new residential units and about 2 million square feet of new retail and commercial space under the name Glacier Town Center.

Now that the land is back in his hands, Roger Claridge said he’ll put the wheat field back into production and wait to see what happens with the economy.

With 25 years of retail experience, Bucky Wolford started looking for potential mall sites in the Flathead in May 1999. He submitted a request to the county in July 2001 for a growth policy amendment and zone change for a 147-acre site in Evergreen. The county commissioners approved his requests several months later.

As the Glacier Mall project grew to 247 acres with a 750,000-square-foot mall, the city of Kalispell sued in October 2001 claiming any project within the joint city-county planning jurisdiction must be approved by both parties. After Wolford revised his planning requests and applied for annexation into Kalispell, the Kalispell City Council approved the growth policy amendment 5-4 in July 2002.

The proposed site, however, sat on a shallow moving aquifer, and in January 2003, Wolford announced plans to relocate the project to a 485-acre site at U.S. 93 and Reserve Drive. He submitted a new growth policy amendment and zone change request for 274 acres of general business zoning, 143 acres of 5-acre suburban-agricultural zoning and 64 acres of mixed office and residential development.

After receiving 2,507 comments opposed to the $150 million project and 1,861 in favor, the county commissioners unanimously approved Wolford’s request in November 2003. Within a month, opponents had organized a voter-petition drive, and two grassroots groups, North 93 Neighbors and Let The People Vote, sued in court.

On Feb. 16, 2005, saying the county had followed state law and the plaintiffs failed to show evidence of spot zoning, District Court Judge Stewart Stadler ruled in favor of Wolford. North 93 Neighbors said they might appeal the case to the Montana Supreme Court.

Over the next few years, however, as more than a million square feet of new retail sprouted up along U.S. 93 just south of his proposed project, Wolford gave up the idea of a giant enclosed mall and replaced it with a “lifestyle center” to be built in phases.

The additional retail development on U.S. 93 also created traffic issues with expensive solutions. While the city of Kalispell expressed concerns about too many traffic lights on U.S. 93, Wolford was looking at a $5 million interchange and costly traffic impact fees.

Wolford’s patience paid off when the Kalispell City Council approved the Glacier Town Center in January 2008 and agreed to annex the site. By the end of the year, however, Wall Street collapsed, the global economy went into a deep recession, and the mall project moved into a holding pattern with no end in site.

The impact of the recession was driven home when Wolford’s son, Chad, was sued by a Chattanooga bank on Feb. 13, 2009, for defaulting on a $2 million loan for a planned jewelry store and art gallery there. Chad Wolford was the vice president and spokesman for the Flathead Valley mall project. A Tennessee judge granted the bank’s request to seize jewelry put up as collateral for Wolford’s loan.