City of Whitefish to Pursue Grant for Big Mountain Road Roundabout

Whitefish city councilors in a Tuesday work session instructed city staff to pursue a federal grant application to help fund a roundabout at Big Mountain Road and East Lakeshore Drive in an effort to improve traffic flow and alleviate safety concerns at the intersection heavily frequented throughout ski season.

The move represents a larger public-private partnership between the city, the Montana Department of Transportation (MDT), and the private property owner of the land west of the proposed roundabout, who would participate in the local funding match should the city be awarded the federal monies. 

Arthur Donnelly of Conti Street Partners, the private property owner, alongside consulting firm WGM Group, identified the potential funding source: the federal Community Project Funding program, which provides members of Congress the opportunity to request funding for projects that address significant community infrastructure needs. The city would aim to be part of the 2027 grant application cycle and to start construction in 2028.

The project’s engineers from WGM Group predicted the local match percentage for the grant to be around 13% of an estimated project cost of between $4.5 and $6 million, based on preliminary designs.

“At this point there’s $0, other than us applying for the grant funding. The city is not contributing additional taxpayer dollars to this project,” City Manager Dana Meeker told councilors at the Sept. 8 work session.

The preliminary roundabout design proposed would re-align Big Mountain Road, shifting the roadway east to address the limited visibility associated with the existing intersection, which is located within the curve of East Lakeshore Drive.

“I’m sure you’ve all had to kind of do the look over your shoulder as you’re trying to get out to make that left coming from Big Mountain,” Mike Brodie of WGM Group said. “This would kind of line the intersection at a perpendicular location on East Lake Shore Drive, and then the roundabout would then be at that intersection.”

“Roundabouts in general handle congestion better than other intersection control alternatives, being a signal or a stop control, because a signal or a stop sign forces you to stop, and a roundabout is a yield control, so you generally process flow through a roundabout better,” fellow engineer Stephen McDaniel added. “We’ve done a series of traffic analyses on this particular intersection, and it shows the delay coming from … this level of service. So A is good; F is bad. We’re looking at increasing from like a C/F to an A/B, which is great.”

With the city currently pursuing plans to add a second city-operated fire station north of the Baker Avenue viaduct, the preliminary roundabout designs also take into consideration the location of the fire station, since it is projected to be built on Iron Horse Golf Club at the intersection in question. Meeker told councilors the size and location of the proposed roundabout would align well with the potential fire station. 

“I’ve long thought, having driven that road my entire life almost, skiing a lot, one, that the intersection needs to be moved to the east, which that’s a positive,” Councilor Andy Feury said. “I’ve long thought the roundabout is the only real solution there.”

Although presented more than four-and-a-half years ago, the ghost of the Mountain Gateway Development — a project proposed on the property now owned by Donnelly — still lingered over Tuesday’s work session discussions.

Located at the base of Big Mountain Road, the development would have led to the construction of 318 units of new housing (270 rental apartments, 36 townhouses and 12 condominiums) on 32.7 acres of land, including 32 deed-restricted units for people earning between 60% and 80% of the area’s median income. The development would also have set aside land for a nonprofit to develop into affordable housing. 

Additionally, the developer had offered up a tract of land for a fire station and a roundabout would have been installed at the intersection of East Lakeshore Drive and Big Mountain Road.

Public outcry followed the proposed development, with some opponents threatening to cease making charitable donations in the community. Billionaire business owner Mark Jones went so far as to email city council about his disapproval of the development and intention to withhold future financial support for affordable housing, which he said he supported, but not at this location.

Following more than three hours of public comment, the city council at a February 2022 meeting voted by a 5-1 margin to reject the planned unit development and a related conditional zoning request.

On Tuesday, the message from the property’s new owner, who had no involvement in the Mountain Gateway Development, and engineers was clear: there’s no development currently planned for the property. 

“We own some land around there, but we don’t have any proposed development there,” Donnelly said. “From my conversations and the main reason I’m here today, I’m not here to ask for the city of Whitefish to be coming out of pocket for this project. It’s basically just putting your support behind the project, allowing access to these grants.”

Despite the assurance, some councilors were still apprehensive, especially since the report from WGM Group included a traffic analysis based on the existing city of Whitefish base zoning density, which translated into 375 dwelling units on the property. The report, however, did note that there’s no current development plan for the property.

“What you’re referring to is in our traffic impact memo that’s included in this, and when we were going through that process, we had to come up with something for MDT just to say that it would work,” Brodie said. “We’ve made a very conservative estimate just based on underlying zoning and what the zoning allows … there.”

“I was expecting somebody would see that and think we’re proposing some giant development with this, but it’s really just for, at this point, just to have a baseline of what this thing can handle, and making sure that we’re not under-designing it; making sure that it actually does function,” he later added.

Regardless, some councilors were wary that constructing the roundabout will likely make development more appealing on the tracts of land west of the base of Big Mountain Road.

“Certainly a benefit to the property to pull that road out of it and splitting it one-third, two-thirds; it’s going to make that piece of property much more developer friendly,” Feury said. 

“Something’s going to happen on that property at some point in the future, whether we like it or not, and will this help to facilitate that? Probably,” he added. “I mean, if it’s done then obviously the intersection is not a problem for an application at that point, and if it’s funded at the taxpayer dime, that’s even better for the developer.”

With future development application approval moving to a faster, more administrative staff level process with less public notice due to changes under the Montana Land Use Planning Act (MLUPA), Councilor Rebecca Norton also expressed concern over the public’s ability to comment on potential development on the property, especially given the controversy of the Mountain Gateway Development. 

Meeker noted the public would have a chance to give feedback when the grant application for the roundabout comes before city council for official approval. Public feedback would likely be necessary if a developer came forward with a plan for Donnelly’s property, since some of the land would need to be annexed, she added. 

“I think it’s great that you guys are thinking outside the box about how to get things paid; Wisconsin’s been really difficult to rebuild,” Norton said. “I kind of feel like the public might take this as a workaround for a big project coming, and Mountain Gateway had a lot of people against it. I think this is nice that we’re going to have the things that we need out there for infrastructure. You know, the fire station was part of Mountain Gateway before, and the road improvement was part of the design too … but what will happen then is you will be outside the public purview in terms of development.”

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