Community Foundation to receive large donation specified for affordable housing

The Lack of affordable housing in Whitefish is an issue the Whitefish Community Foundation and its donors are actively working to address.

Last week the foundation was informed of a significant donation from community donors Mark and Robyn Jones who are committing $1 million and agreeing to be the anchor donors for an affordable housing project in Whitefish. According to the Community Foundation, this donation was made specifically to help initiate the project and will go toward creating the preliminary design of that project.

Whitefish Community Foundation President Linda Engh-Grady told the Pilot recently that for months now the Joneses have been in contact with the foundation about wanting to support an affordable housing project in Whitefish. Mark Jones and Engh-Grady discussed the desire to develop a complex that is 100% privately funded and operated by a nonprofit. This initial development would then be used as an endowment that could help pay for other local affordable housing projects in the future.

“It would be managed as a nonprofit, the money would be carried through to future projects,” Engh-Grady said. “That’s kind of what we’re trying to do here, that’s what we had initially been working on since Mark Jones reached out to me months ago.”

The foundation is focused on gathering enough private funding for an affordable housing project that when finished is an attractive development with plenty of green space including parks and walking paths. Engh-Grady says the foundation envisions the project being close to town, therefore eliminating any commute for local workers, and being an aesthetically pleasing, desirable housing complex.

She says with prices to build being where they are today, a large development of potentially up to 100 units could cost upwards of $20 million to complete. But, along with the Jones’ donation, the foundation is also having several additional community members express interest in supporting a workforce housing project.

“Everybody is anxious to get something going,” Engh-Grady said. “I have people that really want to make it happen, not just the Joneses, I’ve got a lot of people that want to make this happen.”

The foundation believes a potential location for the housing project could be on the city-owned property off Monegan Road — though several steps by the City of Whitefish including rezoning the property would need to take place beforehand. There is a possibility the property won’t get approval, and then the foundation would look to fund a project in a different location.

But the Community Foundation and the anchor donors, the Joneses, like the potential of the Monegan property.

“We support Linda’s vision for the Monegan Road location,” Mark Jones told the Pilot in an email.

The foundation is already in conversations with the Whitefish Housing Authority and their associated nonprofit Housing Whitefish, who would also be involved in the potential project.

At a City Council meeting in November, the city requested that the council consider updating the site plan for the 88-acre property off Monegan Road to a plan that identified 8 acres in the northwest corner that could be developed for workforce housing. This new site plan was created after the Whitefish Housing Authority asked the city if any property could immediately be available for local housing as land in Whitefish is extremely difficult to come by at a reasonable price and the need for affordable housing is bursting at the seams.

“The Whitefish Housing Authority has been working with the Whitefish Community Foundation, donors Mark and Robyn Jones, and additional donors to identify and bring forth a large workforce housing development for Whitefish…” Housing Authority board member Katie Williams told council at the November meeting. “We have discovered in our search that land that is not too expensive, able to receive the needed infrastructure and is properly zoned is very hard to come by in the 59937 zip code. The 8 acres on Monegan Road could potentially check all of these boxes.”

Council in November gave the go-ahead to adopt the new site plan and were in favor of city staff taking the initial steps to make the land available for housing.

According to Whitefish City Manager Dana Smith, the city property is currently zoned agricultural and several steps need to be taken in order for the property to be able to host affordable housing.

“To meet the density necessary to develop an affordable housing project, even with the land as part of the subsidy for the project, we know that zoning would need to change,” Smith said.

As of now, Smith says the city is working with a surveyor and hoping to do a boundary line adjustment rather than go through the lengthy process of creating a subdivision. The boundary line adjustment could take around 12 to 15 weeks, says Smith, but creating a subdivision would take a couple additional months to complete.

“We started working with a surveyor to start with the boundary line adjustment process, assuming that goes through we will start working on the application to move through the zone change and Growth Policy amendment,” she explained.

Zone changes and amendments to the Growth Policy all have an extensive public process to go through before any changes are made; both the Whitefish Planning Board and City Council will have to consider each part of the process.

Smith says the city is hoping to rezone that part of the property from agricultural to a residential zoning, preferably R-2, two-family residential, to have the density for a large project. If the property can be rezoned and the Growth Policy updated, then the city will donate the land to the Whitefish Housing Authority with a contract to be developed into affordable housing.

“We understand that there is a significant donor that has committed funds for that project, but… how the Housing Authority and Housing Whitefish fund this project is up to them, we are just looking at donating land that we have available,” Smith said.