The vision for a mixed-use Whitefish development that has been incubating for the last seven years underwent another change this week, when the city council at its Monday night meeting approved a request from the developer to increase the number of residential units that could be built as part of the project.
A preliminary plat for the project at 95 Karrow Avenue, called Karrow Yards (formerly Karrow 95), was first approved in 2018. It was originally proposed that the project would include a hotel, retail space, a marketplace area, a restaurant, and 97 residential units. Subsequent changes over the years have amended the layout in different ways, most recently to allow for the construction of up to 150 residential units.
Under the conditions of approval the council voted on Monday night, if the developer were to exceed the 122 units that could be built by right, the city would require that it participate in its Legacy Homes Program, which offers developers incentives, like zoning deviations, for the inclusion of deed-restricted housing. In this case, if the project reached 150 units, 15 (or 10%) would need to be affordable.
Aaron Wallace, an architect on the project, told the council the financier has become the developer, and has a different vision for the development than what was approved in the past.
“Where things sat for two years is that the underlying development where it was a mixed-use project with limited residential just didn’t have the financial wherewithal for anyone to move forward with it,” Wallace said. “It sat there for two years with people looking at it to kind of make a project out of it and it just didn’t make financial sense.”
Wallace said that they are not interested in creating a high-turnover situation with the residential units, which the developer intends to hold as rental properties with leases starting out at a minimum on a monthly basis.
“It is a long-term rental project,” Wallace said, adding that the hotel component is where they would see higher turnover.
While he said that price points for rentals have not been determined, they would be market rate.
In approving the amendment, the council altered one condition of approval to say that should the Legacy Homes Program be invoked on behalf of the project, the deed-restricted units would need to be constructed concurrently with the first phases of the development’s residential construction.
Wallace told the council that the plan right now is to “go vertical” with construction next spring or summer.