Neighbors voice concern over planned resort project

A potential new resort and residential development on Whitefish Lake has drawn the attention of neighbors of the potential project planned for currently undeveloped property near Big Mountain Road.

About 15 Whitefish residents lined the back wall of the meeting room for the March 14 city of Whitefish Wisconsin Avenue corridor plan steering committee meeting in the Firebrand Hotel.

The development is planned for three properties owned by Krummholz Lodge owner Joe Gregory — two lots adjacent to Big Mountain Road on the east and west sides of the road totaling almost 27 acres and an 11-acre lot south of East Lakeshore Drive.

Early designs include plans to turn the intersection of East Lakeshore and Big Mountain Road into a roundabout.

Marcia Scheffels worries that a roundabout would be narrow and slow, such as roundabouts on the Highway 93 Bypass in Kalispell, making travel dangerous for the SNOW bus and other large vehicles heading up to Big Mountain.

“I wonder if we shouldn’t learn from the Kalispell bypass roundabouts. Our school buses go up there all the time,” Scheffels said. “I would be concerned about the safety of that with the big buses.”

Houston Drive resident Ben Cavin also voiced concern on how the annexation of Gregory’s lakeshore property into the city would affect his neighborhood’s own fight against annexation. If a lodge were built on Gregory’s property, it would be required to connect to adjacent sewer and water utilities owned by the city and would thus need to be annexed.

“This would go unfavorably on our annexation lawsuit it would seem to me,” Cavin said. “We’re trying hard not to be annexed into the city.”

Property owners in the Houston Lakeshore Tract and Stocking Addition have an appeal pending with the Montana Supreme Court claiming that a Flathead District Court erred in its decision in favor of allowing the city to annex several properties in the neighborhood.

The project is planned to include a resort lodge likely located in the southern property, which includes 700 feet of lake frontage on Whitefish Lake. Along Big Mountain Road, resort residential properties would likely be located on the west property and ancillary or administrative buildings to the east.

During the meeting, BJ Grieve, senior planner for WGM Group, said while he and Gregory understand the development is likely to have a few residents shaking their heads, Grieve said it’s important for the project that they can hear these concerns early in the design process.

“There are all kinds of opportunities for symbiotic relationships with the city and with Joe’s property and how it gets developed,” he said. “Whatever is important to the community, whatever is important to the steering committee and the planning process, we are all ears. We want to hear whatever you have to say.”

No architect has been hired to design the lodge, though Grieve noted that Gregory has worked with Altius Design Group to draft some ideas for the project.

At the meeting, Grieve showed magazine cut outs of different lodge designs that Gregory would like to style his development around. Though he wants the lodge to be “grand,” Grieve also noted that Gregory is looking for ways to mitigate any concerns over the height of the building and maintain the rural nature of the area by retaining existing trees on the properties.

There are also several abandoned buildings, from boat and pump sheds to cabins, on the lakefront property south of East Lakeshore Drive, most of which are boarded up and uninhabitable, Grieve said.

“Those structures, at this point, they have been thoroughly examined to see if they can be rebuilt, remodeled, salvaged, anything,” he said. “At this point, there’s just not much that can be done without basically rebuilding them.”

To mitigate traffic concerns, Grieve said he and Gregory have discussed turning the intersection of East Lakeshore and Big Mountain Road into a roundabout. However, East Lakeshore is a state-owned road and any intersection changes would need to come from the Montana Department of Transportation.

Noting that most of the members of the public in attendance were there to discuss the potential development, committee chair Rebecca Norton urged an agenda amendment to discuss the project.

“This isn’t really a public process quite yet,” she said. “We have a certain amount of work to get through. And so we, as a committee, decided to engage people that had land in the area early on, so we could have a more of a built-out idea of what people are planning so we could negotiate infrastructure things.”

The project is still very early in design, with only rough mockups of how the lodge, resort residential and ancillary areas would be laid out around the intersection, and Norton urged the need for neighbors to negotiate with the developer to find a middle ground for the project.

“They have the right to develop it now,” she said. “What they’re trying to do is present the concept that they think would help the city in a way that we think is valuable to negotiate. The reason why we’re letting people bring these ideas early is because we want to negotiate what’s best for the whole community in the long run, which is a 20-year plan.”