City Commissioners are scheduled to hold a public hearing during their April 2 meeting for a proposed rezone for a 92-unit multifamily residential project off Bay Drive.
Commissioners set the hearing after about an hour of public comment and discussion on the proposal during their March 5 meeting, with Commissioner Rick Tryon opposed saying he thought they wouldn’t be ready to review the request on April 2 but didn’t mention any specific questions or concerns during the March meeting.
City sets public hearing for proposed housing project off Bay Drive
Planning director Brock Cherry said during the March 5 meeting that staff recognized there were neighborhood concerns about the project, but that the due process set by code and zoning ordinances at this point was to set the public hearing to address those questions.
“I don’t think we’re ready to make a decision. It’s far too weighty of an issue,” Tryon said during the March 5 meeting and that he’d rather wait for the growth policy to be completed, which could be several years.
City Commission to set public hearing for proposed Bay Drive multifamily housing project
Cherry recommended that commissioners read the comprehensive staff report on the proposal that staff have been working on for months.
The city’s planning board/zoning commission voted 5-1 in February to recommend approval of the request to rezone about 4.46 acres at 805 2nd St. S.W. from R-1 single-family suburban. It was most recently a mobile home court that had up to 14 mobile homes at one time, according to city staff, but is currently vacant.
The property owners, Craig and Robert Stainsby, are requesting the zone change to M-2 mixed use facilitate a property sale to develop a 92-unit multifamily residential project, dubbed Bay View Apartments, next to Garden Home Park, off Bay Drive.
The request does not include the single-family residents at the southeast corner of Bay Drive and 2nd Street. Southwest, according to the staff report.
The first phase of the proposed project would be a three-story 36-unit building along the western side of the subject property; the second phase would be a three-story 42-unit building in the center of the property; and the third phase would be seven two-unit townhomes on the eastern portion of the site, near the Missouri River, according to the staff report.
The infill project would use existing city infrastructure and services, rather than further stretching those resources by expanding the city limits, according to multiple city officials and many in the development community.
All of the units would be market rate, meaning no government subsidies to create low-income housing, according to the developer.
The second and third phases of the proposed project are in the Special Flood Hazard Area, or 100-year floodplain so the applicant will have to meet requirements of the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency and city floodplain development regulations, according to staff.
During the March 5 commission meeting, a number of area residents spoke in opposition to the proposed housing project.
Several said they were in favor of building new housing in the community, but not on the property off Bay Drive in their neighborhood, which they said was quiet and largely unchanged for 30 years.
Maurice Cameron said he’d lived in the neighborhood for two decades and has noticed traffic issues. He said that since the River’s Edge Trail came through the area, there’s more traffic with joggers, walkers and cyclists.
Kirby Berlin, a neighborhood resident, said the project could decrease property values for neighboring properties and that people moved into the area to have the environment created in the R-1 suburban residential zoning district.
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Some residents asked questions about site work and fill dirt on the property.
Lonnie Hill, the city planner on the project, told The Electric in mid-March that he had checked with the city’s Public Works environmental division and the contractor had an erosion control permit on file rather that a stormwater pollution prevention plan due to the size of the disturbed area being just under the threshold for requiring such a plan.
Hill said he notified the environmental division that there was a concern about the silt fence after receiving an email from The Electric, so the division conducted a site inspection and reported that the silt fences were installed correctly and the site is in compliance with their erosion control permit requirements.
Hill said the contractor was onsite during the inspection and city staff discussed the silt fence and best practices for stockpile management. He said public works staff also advised the contractor that if the disturbed area was to grow in size, they would need a stormwater pollution prevention plan prior to any additional disturbance.
Hill said that property owners are able to conduct site clearing and grubbing work on private property before obtaining a building permit or zoning change, as long as they are appropriately permitted through the city’s environmental division.
In an email to the commission, Katie Hanning, Home Builders Association of Great Falls director, sent a myth versus fact document higher density development produced by the Urban Land Institute, American Institute of Architects, Sierra Club and the National Multi Housing Council.
In the document, the agencies wrote that, “no discernible difference exists in the appreciation rate of properties
located near higher-density development and those that are not. Some research even shows that higher-density development can increase property values.”
Commercial and industrial zoning areas are across the street from the proposed housing development.
The city is currently reviewing a permit application for a new dispensary at 301 Huffman Ave. in the vicinity of the proposed housing development.
Area residents submitted a formal protest to the project, so two-thirds of commissioners would have to approve the rezone rather than a simple majority.
Since the planning board and city commission’s first read of the rezone request, staff received more public comment, including support for the project.
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Len Watkins, president of Gusto Distributing, wrote that, “Great Falls is in desperate need of housing of any kind. I am not even sure why we need to be voicing support for the project, it should be a done deal. One person complained it would increase traffic; another complained it would lower their value of their house (v.s. a trailer park); one person said rapes would increase in the neighborhood. Please don’t listen to crazy people. This should be a no brainer.”
Several area residents suggested that apartments drive up crime in an area.
According to Great Falls Police Department data, that is not true.
Capt. John Schaffer provided data to the GFDA in December.
He pulled crime data around three of the most recent large apartment complexes completed in the city, ARC Apartments on Division Road, Talus Apartments, south of Benefis and Rockcress Commons, at 23rd Street South and 22nd Avenue.
Talus and ARC are market rate apartments running $1,000 to $1,800 per month for one to two bedrooms.
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Rockcress Commons is a NeighborWorks Great Falls development with income restrictions to ensure affordable housing, with rents from $875 to $1,204.
“Bottom line is there is minimal activity in and around these three apartment complexes compared to others that are subsidized. These apartments do not attract a criminal element,” Schaffer said in his email.
ARC Apartments weren’t operational on Division Road in 2022 and there were three calls for service at Smelter and Division that year, all three crashes.
In 2023, there were 16 calls for services around ARC Apartments, with four of them being crashes at Smelter and Division, according to GFPD data.
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That averages one call for service per month at ARC, Schaffer said, and one call every 121 days at Talus with three calls for the year and one call every 23 days at Rockcress with a total of 14 calls at that complex for 2023.
“The Great Falls Police Department uses crime data such as this to deploy our resources. Based on this data, we would not be asking our officers to patrol these apartment complexes in order to prevent crime,” Schaffer said.
Several others wrote emails to commissioners asking them to support the project, including business owners, bankers, a recent University of Providence graduate and the Malmstrom Spouses Club.
During the Feb. 13 zoning commission meeting, Julie Essex, a board member, moved to deny the request because she was worried about spot zoning, but not other members seconded her motion.
Essex cited a 1981 Montana Supreme Court case that was cited in a 2021 case on zoning in Whitefish.
City staff said they didn’t believe there was a spot zoning issue, but would review the cases Essex referenced to be sure before the City Commission reviewed the rezone request.
In their Feb. 21 memo to commissioners, city staff wrote that they still find no spot zoning issues.
Staff pointed out that since the “establishment of the Little framework in 1981, the district court in Whitefish noted that there are no opinions of the Montana Supreme Court where a zoning decision that complied with a neighborhood
plan/comprehensive plan/master plan was found to be spot zoning.”
City board to consider 92-unit housing project off Bay Drive
The Great Falls Development Alliance retained a third party consultant to also review the question of spot zoning and that consultant agreed with city staff that no such issue exists in this instance.
Staff has referenced the city’s growth policy and other planning documents in their recommendation to approve the rezone request and that the subject property is adjacent to other properties with the same zoning designation and would continue to function as a residential land use, though not single family homes as many area residents said they’d prefer.
The developer’s team presented at the Nov. 8 Neighborhood Council 2 meeting but those in attendance said that not enough of the neighborhood was aware of the project so the council voted to discuss the project at a special meeting on Dec. 6. Area residents attended that meeting and expressed concerns about traffic and safety, but the council did not take action and put the item on their Feb. 13 meeting agenda, when they voted to recommend denial of the rezone request.
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The Great Falls Development Alliance has said for years that the city needs new and more housing and has commissioned an update to their 2022 market assessment, conducted by the Concord Group, which projected that there is demand for about 450 new housing units per year in Cascade County over the next 10 years.
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Based on the expected split between owners and renters, the assessment projected that it breaks down to a need for 190 new rental units and 250 new for sale/new ownership units per year over the next decade across income levels.
City Commissioners have also said during many public meetings that there’s a need for housing and recently asked the Air Force specifically about housing needs related to the upcoming Sentinel missile upgrade project that’s projects to bring several thousand contractors to the area over several years. A half dozen Air Force and Northrop Grumman officials attended the March 5 commission meeting to answer those questions for commissioners.
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Lawrence Gadbaw lives at the corner of the property proposed for the housing project. His parcel is not included in the rezone request.
He said during the March 5 commission meeting that the area is known as the Garden Home Tracts and that name doesn’t lend to apartments.
Gadbaw said it “doesn’t make sense to me to turn it into something like this. Yeah we need housing, but seems like we’re struggling to take care of what we already have. If we keep adding more, how will we keep up with it.”
He said he wasn’t against the property owners doing something with their property, but was opposed to apartment buildings.
Cheryl Schmidt said, “we do not want our quiet tight neighborhood disrupted for one person to gain.”
She said if the property was rezoned to M-2, there could be more development in the area and suggested they look somewhere else to develop.
The local developer, including Dale Nelson of Nelson Architects, included land restrictions in their voluntary development agreement that were allowable in the M-2 district but they wouldn’t consider. Those include:
- off-site liquor sales
- vehicle services
- warehouse
- animal shelter
- educational facility, K-12 or higher education
- instructional facility
- telecommunication facility, concealed, unconcealed co-located facilities
- bus transit terminal
- heli-pad
- parking lot, principal use
- parking structure
- railroad yard
- taxi cab dispatch terminal
- contractor yard, Type I and Type II
The draft agreement is included in the staff report and the finalized agreement would also be a public document.
Brock Cherry, city planning director, said during the Feb. 13 planning board meeting that the city can’t restrict land uses on a property that are allowable in a zoning district, but a property owner can do it voluntarily.
Jake Clark of GFDA said in March that the proposed location is beneficial as infill development that will use existing public infrastructure and city services.
He said it’s an aspirational project similar to what was envisioned in the Missouri River Corridor Plan.
“The city has hoped for development along the river and put that forth in planning documents,” Clark said.
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The property is located within the primary impact area of the Missouri River Corridor Plan. The area includes lands with “strong relationships to the river that are most central to the corridor plan. The plan identifies appropriate riverfront uses that reinforce the vision for the Missouri River corridor. The listed uses within the plan include two to four story rental apartments and townhouses,” according to the staff report.
One goal of the plan is to remove barriers, one of which was identified is the lack of mixed-use/multi-use zoning districts or options in local regulations appropriate for riverfront redevelopment, according to the city.
In response to that plan, the city adopted mixed-use transitional zoning along Bay Drive in 2005.
Commissioner Susan Wolff said during the March 5 meeting that she had sent a long list of questions to city planning staff earlier that day from going through the neighborhood and reading the staff report.
During an earlier meeting, Wolff said that during their January retreat, commissioners said they wanted to look at infill projects rather than expand city limits. She said that they’ll get differing opinions on those projects.
