Page 24 - Flathead Beacon // 6.17.15

NEWS
COVER
Construction along U.S. Highway 93 in Whitefish. GREG LINDSTROM | FLATHEAD BEACON
around,” he said. “Thinking back to the crash, I have never seen anything disappear that fast, but at the same time I haven’t seen anything reappear this fast. The turnaround in the market was extremely fast.”
Malmquist said one notable trend he’s noticing is a much smaller percentage of the homes he’s building are second homes, but are instead primary residences with price-points ranging from $500,000 to $3 million.
Construction crews have broken ground on a mas- sive subdivision project in Kalispell, one that has been on the backburner since the economy imploded and is now coming to fruition. The Bloomstone Develop- ment is located on 79 acres west of Kidsports Complex and represents the latest large housing subdivision to emerge after the recession. Developers plan to establish more than 500 housing units of varying size and
price, ranging from apartments for rent to sin- gle-family homes.
The growth is not isolated to Kalispell and Whitefish.
In Columbia Falls, Xanterra Parks and Resorts, Glacier National Park’s concessioner, moved into and cleaned up the old First Citi- zens Bank building, converting what was a hole in the downtown core into an active business. Meanwhile, single-family homes are cropping up all over town.
Contractor Jason Mueller, of Rock River Builders, has taken on residential projects from the shores of Flathead Lake to Columbia Falls, and said while business has been incrementally improving for several years, he hasn’t seen any- thing like the current growth in years.
“We have been wanting something like this for a long time,” Mueller said. “It dried up like a dry sponge, and just in the last couple of months it has exploded. It’s all over the valley.”
Another of Malmquist’s project, SmartLam, a
manufacturer and distributor of cross laminated timber products, has plans to develop a new building in Colum- bia Falls, estimated at 120,000 to 160,000 square feet. The city council on June 15 reviewed a request for a zon- ing change at the industrial park, which would open the door for SmartLam’s possible expansion.
In Bigfork, Craig Stoddard was among the pool of big-ticket general contractors whose workflow dried up around 2007, and his high-end custom homes stopped selling.
At the height of the building boom, Stoddard was overseeing construction of three or four new homes each year, all of them designed with his signature Craftsman style, with Douglas fir timber framing, cedar shakes, rustic oak floors and cherry cabinets.
When the market crashed, he was lucky to build one new home a year, and to make up for the lost work he supplemented with remodel jobs.
Today, he’s building high-end custom homes throughout the valley, and says Whitefish is the busiest market.
“I am booked for two years. That’s how good things have turned around,” Stoddard said.
Because housing prices are coming back, Stoddard says he’s not cutting costs or skimping on his bids.
“It really is getting back to where it was,” he said. “But I don’t think it will ever get back to how it was in 2005 and 2007. And it probably shouldn’t.”
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PLANES, TRAINS AND AUTOMOBILES
I
nfrastructure is a simple yet pivotal part of every community, but it is especially significant in the Flathead Valley, where a network of roads ties a broad range of
potentialimpact.Thesecondphaseoftheprojectisscheduledfor completion in July. The third phase will extend to mile post 133.
Air travel is also experiencing an increase in activity. Glacier Park International Airport is on pace to match last year’s record number of passengers. A total of 109,701 people flew in and out of the valley from January through April, the same as this time last year. May is expected to see an uptick as well as the tourism season picks up.
Amtrak’s Whitefish station is also expected to match or surpass last year’s ridership total of roughly 50,000 passengers. The city of Kalispell and partners are working together to build an industrial railroad park off Whitefish Stage Road, which will allow the tracks to be removed in downtown as part of a broad core area revitalization plan. The $21 million project could begin surfacing in the next six months.
cities and rural communities together. The main thoroughfare — U.S. Highway 93 — is at the center of attention in Kalispell and Whitefish. The U.S. 93 Alternate Route, or bypass, is nearing completion and could be finished in 2017, ushering in a new era for transportation through the valley’s largest city. The latest phases of development are expected to move forward in the coming months. When completed, the final 3.5 miles of road will feature four lanes resembling an interstate highway that travels from Reserve Loop near Glacier High School to U.S. Highway 2, where the south portion of the bypass currently ends.
In Whitefish, the western corridor is undergoing a transformation of its own on a smaller scale but with no less of a
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JUNE 17, 2015 // FLATHEADBEACON.COM