fbpx

Massive Housing Development Underway in Kalispell

First phase of Bloomstone to have 96 apartments, 25 houses

By Molly Priddy
Construction of the Bloomstone subdivision near Kidsports on May 19, 2015. Greg Lindstrom | Flathead Beacon

The arrival of summer means construction season in the Flathead, and for Jim Davis and the rest of the team responsible for the Bloomstone Development, this has been a long time coming.

Earlier this spring, construction crews broke ground on a massive subdivision project in Kalispell, one that has been on the backburner since the economy imploded in 2008 and is now coming to fruition.

“We shut down and were able to ride out the storm,” said Davis, a project manager for and part owner of Kalispell National Investment Company. “As we started seeing the market changing, we decided to fire back up.”

Firing back up means a major change for the makeup of Kalispell’s housing market. The idea behind Bloomstone is to provide more affordable housing options in the city, Davis said, and to put the development in a convenient area for its residents.

With 79 acres located west of the Kidsports Complex and south of Glacier High School, Bloomstone hopes to establish more than 500 housing units of varying size and price, ranging from apartments for rent to single-family homes.

The first phase of the project is underway, and Davis said progress is moving quickly. It includes an apartment complex with 96 units – eight buildings with 12 apartments in each – and 25 single-family houses.

The initial round of houses will price in at about $220,000 each, Davis said, which is the sweet spot for the tight housing market in Kalispell.

“There’s a lot of the new construction coming on, and we wanted to offer what the valley needs,” Davis said.

Tom Jentz, director of Kalispell’s planning department, said the Bloomstone project is one of many that went dark during the recession, but the developers stuck with it.

Now, with the 96 apartments and 25 houses starting up, this one development is responsible for more housing than all of last year’s start-ups combined, Jentz said.

“Last year, we did about 100 residential permits,” Jentz said. “We have a single project that we’re starting to review, a 96-unit apartment complex.”

Jentz said developer would like to have the apartments completed by June 2016, and Davis also said the 25 houses are on schedule to be finished by Christmas.

There aren’t many active housing projects that seek to provide rental space, Jentz said, for the valley residents who may not be able to afford buying a house or those who just prefer to rent.

“We have such a shortage of rental space,” he said. “Our rental market is the single-family house that someone is either letting it deteriorate or it’s for sale and is being rented until it sells. We haven’t seen a lot of projects like this come through; this will be good.”

One of the reasons Jentz suspects there has been a lack of such housing projects is the unavailability of open space or lots in the city limits. Flathead County has a “plethora” of lots available, he said, but the city subdivisions are filling up.

Davis said the original plan for the first phase of development in Bloomstone, back in 2007, was for 185 units – 64 apartments and 121 houses. Now, however, the market is driving what Bloomstone will build, and the tight rental market points to apartments, he said.

The next phase will likely include 60 homes in a higher price range, he said, from $230,000 to $260,000.

Bloomstone has the capability, with its zoning and permitting, to build housing on smaller lots than usual, at about 4,500 square feet. There are also possibilities for other uses, such as assisted living.

But the goal right now as Davis sees it is to build multi-family housing and single-family housing with close proximity to Glacier High School, the shopping at the retail area in north Kalispell, Flathead Valley Community College, and near the Kalispell Regional medical campus.

“The rental market here is going to be outstanding with the majority of Kalispell’s employee core within a mile of our project,” he said.

The development will also be near the U.S. 93 bypass, with access to the trails that will be built along with the roadway, and will have integrated paths and sidewalks connecting the housing to Kidsports as well.

“It’s been a long time coming and we’re definitely looking forward to the future. It’s tough to say what the market’s going to do and in a development like this the market’s going to drive what we can offer,” Davis said. “Really, it’s exciting to be moving forward again … We’re excited to finally have houses going up.”