UPS Store allowed to stay at new location

The UPS Store is allowed to stay at its new location.

Whitefish City Council on Monday unanimously approved a zoning text amendment that allows private postal and shipping stores in the secondary business district on the U.S. 93 strip.

The decision came after council twice voted to table the matter at two separate meetings in March.

“It’s important that we get to a resolution tonight,” councilor Richard Hildner said of the drawn out process.

The UPS Store recently moved from the Mountain Mall to a new location on East 13th Street near Walgreens, but city regulations didn’t allow shipping services in that district. They were only permitted downtown, along Wisconsin Avenue and along Highway 40.

Councilors generally agreed the UPS Store made sense at its new location, but struggled with the broader implications of the zoning amendment that would allow shipping stores anywhere in the WB-2 zone.

At the March 17 meeting, council tabled the text amendment for shipping and packaging services as a “conditional use” in the zone and directed planning staff to develop more robust findings to support the recommendation.

On Monday, however, council determined that shipping stores should be a “permitted use” for the strip, as opposed to a “conditional use” that requires a more stringent approval process.

“I don’t find permitted use as an offense and I find it consistent with the growth policy,” Hildner said.

Permitted uses allowed in the district include grocery stores, hospitals, wholesale and warehousing, and automotive sales, among others that require large display or parking areas.

Whitefish UPS Store owner Pete Olson spoke emotionally about the drawn out process before the final vote.

“This has dragged us through the dirt for nothing,” he told council. “We’re in the same zone we’ve been in for 22 years. I’m fed up.”

He said they wouldn’t have moved the store if they knew it was against zoning rules.

The matter opened a broader debate about Whitefish’s zoning and protecting the downtown core as the center of business.

Some residents argued that zoning regulations should be protected to prevent “sprawl” along the 93 strip, while others said the city needed to use “common sense” in the decision.

Residents Pete and Deb Forthofer urged council to approve the amendment.

“It makes no sense that moving a few hundred yards down the street to what we feel is a better location for this business would not be allowed,” they wrote in a letter to council. “Use common sense and stop making our city the enemy of good, clean and necessary businesses.”

In another letter to the city, Whitefish resident Chuck Martin said the discussion had dragged on for too long.

“I understand the council’s concern of zoning and permitting from a broader view,” he wrote. “I also urge council to take a broader view as it relates to small business and the local economy. In my opinion, this simple decision to permit the UPS store to operate in their new location has taken an inordinate amount of time and energy that could be applied to more productive council actions.”

Don Kaltschmidt, owner of the Don “K” car dealership on the U.S. 93 strip, also spoke in support of the zone change.

“I do understand about being careful with WB-2 zoning,” he said, “but this business makes a lot of sense to be in WB-2. Parking downtown is very precious. This business needs to be in the WB-2, not downtown.”

Rhonda Fitzgerald echoed her comments from previous meetings that the discussion shouldn’t be about one business.

“It’s about a use and whether it should be allowed or not,” she said.

She noted that the growth policy designates downtown as Whitefish’s “center for business.”