Cascade County Commissioners affirmed the county’s Zoning Board of Adjustment’s issuance of a special use permit for a multi-sports facility on Gore Hill during an Oct. 9 special meeting.

The ZBOA approved the permit during a July 17 meeting to TNT Sports for a multi-sports training facility and batting cage business on 49th Street Southwest.

TNT Sports is Jen and Dale Gunter, who purchased the property earlier this year.

They’ve partnered with Mighty Mo Volleyball to include a training facility for those competitive programs.

The property is 10.49 acres.

[Project documents are here]

They’re planning an 8,000 square foot, year-round, indoor turf athletic training, plus 3,000 square foot outdoor space, facility, according to their initial permit application.

County board approves permits for multi-sports facility, veterinarian clinic

The proposed project includes two training facility buildings to be constructed, one 80 by 100 feet, the second 100 by 200 feet.

Both are proposed as membership based since both the baseball and volleyball programs are competitive teams.

In August, a neighboring property owner, Panther Lee, filed an appeal to the permit, asking commissioners not to allow the project to move forward stating it was incorrectly labeled as a membership based facility, concerns over traffic and safety and that county staff hadn’t properly notified area property owners.

In her appeal, Lee wrote that it’s a residential neighborhood and that the county shouldn’t allow large commercial operations on the property.

According to the county, the parcel was created in 1974 and when county zoning regulations were adopted in 2005, it was zoned as light industrial, as are many lots around the parcel.

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Lee purchased the property and requested in 2022 that it be rezoned to suburban residential. The county approved that rezoning.

She sold the property in 2023 and that owner subsequently sold the property to TNT Sports in June 2025, according to the county.

During the Oct. 9 meeting, county staff read more than a dozen letters of support for the sporting facility that were received after the meeting packet was posted online.

Lee said that she went door to door in the neighborhood talking to residents about the project and whether they wanted the facility in their area. Fifty-one people signed the petition she submitted with her appeal.

She said they support youth facilities in Cascade County but are “just scared of what this proposed location is going to do for our neighborhood. I don’t believe that it fits there. It is not a membership club. It is for gain, it is for profit.”

Lee said neighbors were concerned about traffic as it’s a rural community with no sidewalks and that those using the facility would drive down 53rd Avenue Southwest.

She said the location conformance and wastewater permit applications submitted to the county for the sporting facility list her home address on those forms.

“These errors should have been caught and corrected by the many people involved in the application and in review of the documents,” Lee said.

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Christy Blackbird lives on West Fargo Drive and said she didn’t receive a letter about the proposed project but is a Gore Hill Water board member and learned of it when that entity was notified.

She said those who live in the area wanted to live away from the city for less traffic and fewer people. Allowing the facility “takes away the very reason most of us moved there in the first place. This isn’t about being against sports or kids having opportunities, it’s about safety, infrastructure and protecting our way of life. The roads simply cannot handle more development of this scale.”

Justin McCloud lives on 58th Street and said he didn’t want the facility in his backyard.

Several of those in opposition to the project asked commissioners to drive the area before voting.

Commissioner Joe Briggs said later in the meeting that Halloween will be his 45th anniversary living in the neighborhood.

“I know the roads guys,” he said.

Sacha Simmons, owner of Might Mo Volleyball, said that finding space in town has been “almost impossible.”

Simmons is the assistant volleyball coach at the University of Providence.

She said that it’s 1.5 miles on Tri Hill Frontage Road from Town Pump to their property versus two miles to go around and she believes most will take the frontage road.

A Montana Department of Transportation project is working its way through the process to reconfigure the interstate ramps at Gore Hill. The project includes relocating the existing Tri Hill Frontage Road to the south, along the Town Pump Property.

Roundabouts; auxiliary lane; rerouting frontage road considered for Gore Hill [2019]

MDT is proposing adding roundabouts at those interchanges and adding an additional lane going up the hill dedicated for airport traffic.

That project is currently in the design phase and more information is here.

Simmons said the volleyball program has about 200 participants who practice two nights a week, between about 5-9 p.m., which breaks down to about 60 kids a night and some will carpool.

Dale Gunter, TNT Sports owner, said that the project started with him and his wife supporting son’s passion for baseball.

He said as they’ve traveled with his son’s teams, they noticed other communities had indoor baseball facilities and started looking for a place to build a similar facility in Great Falls.

Gunter said he and his wife live on 53rd Street Southwest, near the proposed facility, in a house his wife built with her father when she was 24.

“We love our Gore Hill community and we want to do absolutely nothing in any way to hurt our Gore Hill community,” he said.

Gunter said that there’s already a hockey arena on the hill and Prolific Basketball is planning to build a facility on airport property.

He said realistically, most kids using the facility will be in school during the day, so most of the facility usage will be in the afternoon and evening.

Gunter said he’d seen critical comments on social media that the kids using the facility are entitled but said “these are kids that are passionate.”

Briggs moved to deny the appeal, affirm the ZBOA permit approval and to direct the county planning department to prepare a zoning map amendment to rezone the property from suburban residential back to industrial.