Kalispell Council Rethinks Main Street Safety Action Plan
City officials adjusted the proposed project to only include roundabouts and safety features along the south side of Main Street, removing a controversial road diet from the prosed grant application
By Zoë Buhrmaster
Kalispell City councilors are revisiting the Safe Streets and Roads for All Grant Program, a federal program that the council opted not to apply for last year due to negative community response to an included road diet that would have trimmed Main Street down to two driving lanes and one turn lane.
The U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) program includes planning, demonstration, and implementation grants for safety initiatives. Kalispell won a planning grant from USDOT in 2022, funding the development of the Main Street Safety Action Plan. The plan prioritized Main Street and First Avenue East and West as priority locations, but council ultimately voted not to apply for the implementation grant to install the proposed designs after community members spoke out against the included road diet.
Back in front of councilors during Monday night’s work session, staff adjusted the proposed project by not reducing lanes on Main Street. Instead, the proposal would include roundabouts at two intersections along U.S. Highway 93 – at 11th Street and 13th Street – along with some curb extensions, rapid flashing beacons and high visibility crosswalks near St. Matthew’s Catholic School.
“Certainly, this project in and of itself is kind of a big one,” City Manager Jared Nygren said, referencing the project area north and south of the old courthouse couplet. “The south half is that conduit into downtown.”
City staff recently met with officials from the Montana Department of Transportation (MDT), which is currently responsible for Kalispell’s main thoroughfare. Early rough estimates of what the proposed project could cost is estimated to be around $25 million, the maximum size of a grant request from the federal program this year. The federal program also requires a 20% match from the city, which would be provided from Tax Increment Financing (TIF) funds.
Nygren noted that last year’s proposal, which included a complete overhaul of Main Street, was posed to cost $26 million, and that would likely be somewhere around $35 million this year due to inflation and increased construction costs.
“It just shows when we have an opportunity like this it may behoove us to go after the opportunity just because it’s there, but we will have to refine the final budget,” Nygren said.
Councilors all said they would likely support applying for a grant with the new project proposal. Councilors Dustin Leftridge, Sid Daoud, and Wes Walker noted that while they largely supported the full project to redesign Main Street, they were happy to see a plan that didn’t include the road diet in light of community concerns.
Walker referenced other issues on Main Street that the safety plan didn’t address, including infrastructure for better water lines to downtown businesses and reconsidering how the city installs trees along Main Street.
“I’m much happier to see a scaled down plan to get exactly what we want in a smaller area,” he said.
Nygren said that if the city applies for a grant application and wins the award, construction would likely be complete within a year. City officials are also waiting to hear back on a grant they applied for earlier this year that would finish the U.S. 93 South Bypass.
Staff will begin working on an application as the deadline to apply for the grant is May 26. A resolution to approve applying for the implementation grant will come before council for a vote in the coming weeks.