County zoning board approves permit extensions for three Madison Food Park components
The Cascade County Zoning Board of Adjustment voted unanimously to extend Madison Food Park’s special use permits during their Dec. 18 meeting for another 36-months, overriding the county planning director’s earlier denial.
Earlier this fall, Michael Harris, county planning director denied an extension request for three special use permits issued to Madison Food Park.
An attorney for Madison Food Park wrote a letter to Harris a month later in November, asking that he refer the request to the ZBOA for consideration.
The permits for Big Sky Cheese, Silver Falls Distillery and Friesen Nutrition’s vitamin trace minerals blending facility were all extended twice previously and as of Dec. 16, all are now expired.
Ed Friesen, managing member of Madison Food Park, wrote to county planning staff on Oct. 16 requesting that their request for a third extension, for 36 months, be placed on the next ZBOA agenda.
Proposed Madison Food Park land for sale; lawsuits ongoing
“As you are likely aware, the time has passed by quickly again prior to us being able to meet all the conditions of the above SUP’s and they will expire soon. We continue to work with the regulatory agencies, contractors and financiers to begin construction as soon as every component is approved to meet the conditions,” Friesen wrote.
Harris responded in an Oct. 20 email to Friesen that the permits were initially issued in 2019 and the last extension granted by the ZBOA in 2023 was through late 2025.
“However, pursuant to Cascade County Zoning Regulations at 10.4 an SUP is valid for one year if construction or the use has not started. The zoning administrator is authorized to issue a one-time six-month extension. The permit expires if the use ceases for six months for any reason,” Harris wrote. “Without additional information showing construction had begun under the issued permits prior to December 2024 or the use has not ceased for six months for any reason my determination would have to be your permits have expired and you must apply for new special use permits. If you wish to apply for new special use permits we can schedule a pre-application meeting at your earliest convenience.”
County grants 2-year extension for Madison Food Park projects [2023]
In a Nov. 17 letter to Harris, Alan McCormick, attorney for Madison Food Park, wrote that the county zoning regulations include a provision that any further extensions of special use permits must be granted by the ZBOA prior to their expiration.
McCormick wrote that they assume Harris meant construction needed to begin prior to this month, rather than December 2024, as written by Harris.
“This determination is directly contrary to Section 10.4 of the Zoning Regulations and, if not corrected immediately, will result in significant liability for Cascade County. There is no reason for treating this situation differently than Cascade County has previously handled requests from Madison Food Park. Section 10.4 specifically grants Madison Food Park the right to request an extension of the permit approvals from the Zoning Board of Adjustment. Your Oct. 20, 2025, determination erroneously eliminates this right,” McCormick wrote. “In order to correct this error, we ask you to immediately place the extension requests on the next Zoning Board of Adjustment meeting agenda and provide proper notice of the agenda item. If for some reason this is not possible prior to the expiration of the permits, please note that our client intends to hold Cascade County responsible for the damages which result from the loss of the permits.”
Madison Food Park subsequently filed a formal appeal of Harris’ decision.
The ZBOA did not meet in November 2025.
Letters from Madison Food Park requesting the extension didn’t detail their plans or project status.
After the agenda and board materials were posted to the county website, the developer sent letters to the ZBOA describing their efforts to work on permitting and associated plans.
The letter, later added to the online packet, is dated Dec. 10, in which Friesen writes that he’s responding to an email from Levine to his lawyer requesting additional information “to spell out the reasons and the need” for another extension.
He wrote that they’ve been “consulting, researching and working with” multiple state agencies on items ranging from quit claim deeds to “beneficial-use treated wastewater irrigation for optimum nutrient distribution per acre as permitted” by the Montana Department of Environmental Quality.
Friesen wrote that they’ve been working with the Montana Department of Transportation and submitted applications for approaches, to which MDT responded that it will require approach drainage culverts specifically designed and sized, a full hydraulic report, a quit claim deed agreement for the four approaches owned by MFP, a traffic impact study to determine if mitigation is required for those approaches, among other items.
An initial traffic impact study was completed in 2021, but MDT has requested an updated study since “this is a phased development and the [study] needs to include discussion on each phase and the anticipated date for the initiation of each phase,” Friesen wrote.
The developers are also working with the Montana Department of Environmental Quality on wastewater, Friesen wrote, and they’ve completed a feasibility study that includes environmental impacts.
“More consultations, studies, reports and actions are required for this large project in order to complete the comprehensive preparations, to build these facilities to ensure that we meet and properly comply with the conditions set out by the issued special use permits. In our opinion, a project such as ours, requires substantially more time than one year to get the proper authorizations and permits from the various agencies involved,” Friesen wrote. “MFP has also aligned and partnered with various equity investors and debt financiers to finance this extensive project, which will be built in phases. With the passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act by the U.S. Congress, Montana has become an attractive and viable state to invest, especially relating to providing more food security to the U.S. MFP’s goal is to establish a value-added food park on this property to enable livestock producers and gain growers in Montana to expand and improve their profitability by manufacturing, developing, processing and packaging locally grown food right here in Cascade County.”
Lawsuit filed against Madison Food Park over unpaid loans [2023]
During the Dec. 18 meeting, Joe Murphy of Big Sky Civil Engineering said that they’re working through permitting processes with various agencies and were still probably about a year out for construction of any of the three SUP projects, with the vitamin facility likely being the closest to building permits.
Friesen said he believed they were about 12 months out on the vitamin facility that was designed and they’d be applying for a building permit.
Erin Tingey, who lives across the street from the proposed facility and has long opposed it, said she was concerned about traffic and asked whether the slaughterhouse permit was still open. The slaughterhouse portion of the project hasn’t yet gone through the special use permit process as Friesen’s team broke it into the smaller components of the cheese facility, distillery and vitamin mixing facility to start.
John Harding, ZBOA member, said the Madison Food Park permits were long time requests and that he didn’t know all the details of the broader project, but thought it would make sense to have a more definitive timeline rather than saying the developer only has a year to stick a shovel in the ground.
“I’m inclined to grant the extension,” Harding said.
Dexter Busby, ZBOA member, said that projects this big can take years to develop engineering studies and work with other state and federal agencies.
Ken Thornton said that he believes the reasons for specific timelines are legislative, but there’s new evidence that the Madison Aquifer is finite, which needs to be considered. He said he saw no reason not to extend the permit deadlines since the appropriate agencies would consider those factors.
Katie Hanning, ZBOA member, asked how it compared to any other similar extensions since she hadn’t heard of any.
Michele Levine, a deputy county attorney, said that the board had previously extended SUPs for Madison Food Park.
Hanning said she meant for other projects and Levine said some projects were in different zoning districts.
For Madison Food Park, their proposed uses are allowed with a special use permit, which is the approach the applicant took rather than requesting to rezone the property, Levine said.
Hanning said she was concerned about setting a precedent for indefinite extensions by granting these permit extensions.
Levine said if that was a concern, they could look at that in future revisions of the county zoning regulations since as currently written, there’s no limit to the number of extensions the board may grant.
David Deffinbaugh, ZBOA board chair, asked Harris, county planning director, if there was a particular reason he’d initially denied the extension request.
Harris said that to send such a request to the board, the request needed to have sufficient information and the county’s regulations include a clause that if construction hasn’t started within a year of issue, the permit expires.
Harding moved to overturn Harris’ denial and extend extensions of all three Madison Food Park permits for 36 months.
The board voted unanimously to extend the permits.
Harris said there’s a provision in county zoning regulations that allows 30 days for an appeal of the ZBOA decision to the county commission.
The provision is: “any person or persons, jointly or severally, aggrieved by a decision of the ZBOA, may present to the Board of County Commissioners a petition, duly verified, setting forth that the decision is illegal, in whole or in part, and specifying the grounds of the illegality. The petition must be presented to the Board of County Commissioners within 30 days after the filing of the decision of the board of adjustment, and a final decision must be made within
60 days of the receipt of the petition.”
The Electric emailed Friesen before the meeting asking, “since the land was listed for sale, and I got the impression the Big Stone Colony had made an offer on the land, and it was tied up in court to settle liens, I’m curious what your plans are for continuing the project?” and corrected ourselves that the colony that had made an offer was Hill Top Colony, not Big Stone.
Friesen responded, “We have no comment at this time on any of your inquiries. You have your information wrong as is most often the case with media.”
The land remains listed for sale at $8.9 million.
The land is also part of a foreclosure action in district court brought by the Great Falls Development Alliance since Madison Food Park defaulted on their loans.
In February 2023, GFDA filed a civil lawsuit in district court over more than $2 million in unpaid loans and placed liens on the Madison Food Park properties east of Great Falls.
During a Sept. 5 court hearing before Judge John Kutzman, it was stated that the amount owed to GFDA was $3.1 million, including attorney’s fees.
As of Dec. 15, Brett Doney, GFDA president, said they had not yet been paid and were waiting on a court decision.
Doney said there had been three offers on the land that he was aware of, including one from Hill Top Colony, that had since expired, and two more from a developer that Friesen had been working with.
Hill Top Colony has been farming the land for some time, Doney said, and had been interested in purchasing the property that they’d been making lease payments on.
County responds to city request for study of Madison Food Park proposal [2020]
As part of the court case, Hill Top is now paying an annual $100,000 lease rate in monthly installments of $8,333.33 until a sheriff’s sale of the land is completed. According to an order from Kutzman, the monthly rent is being sent to GFDA and applied as payment toward the amount due by Madison Food Park on their overdue loan payments. That agreement went into effect Sept. 15.
Doney said that GFDA remains in first position to collect liens from the property sale and that the agency has enough available funding to continue providing other business loans in the meantime.
According to publicly available tax records, Madison Food Park is listed as delinquent on 17 parcels owned under that name in Cascade County, since the first half were due Nov. 30.
The company’s taxable total is $16,603, with $8,369.53 owed in taxes for 2025 and the company last paid taxes in January 2025, according to the county tax records.
Big Sky Cheese defaulted on their loan with the Great Falls Development Authority in 2023.
GFDA’s Doney told The Electric in December 2022 that the company hadn’t paid interest over the entire fiscal year on their bridge loan.
Ed Boland Construction also sued Madison Food Park in 2022 for breach of contract over unpaid invoices, totalling $42,448. A default judgement was entered against MFP in August.
In a Sept. 5 brief filed in district court, Steve Potts, attorney for Madison Food Park, wrote that the parties had decided on foreclosure and the other partners in MFP couldn’t convert their ownership in the company to a credit bid for the land.
“It is clear that MFP is insolvent,” Potts wrote.
During the Sept. 5 hearing, which The Electric observed via Zoom for about six hours, Friesen testified that Madison Food Park was created as a limited liability company in Montana to purchase land in Great Falls at a $5.6 million purchase price.
He said that a Friesen company owned 75 percent of the company and two other companies owned the remaining 25 percent, including Silver Sage Colony in Canada.
Friesen testified that MFP borrowed money from GFDA and that they’d anticipated having an operational facility by 2021 to make payments to share owners.
He said in court that GFDA was not paid, largely due to the COVID-19 pandemic tying up capital and interest.
Friesen said that people lost interest in investing as there was a lot of anxiety in the marketplace and it was very difficult for a few years.
“MFP does not have any money. It is insolvent,” he said during the Sept. 5 hearing, with no prospects for funding.
An attorney for MFP said during the hearing that a $9.9 million offer had been made the previous week and was pending acceptance by the LLC members.
Friesen said in court he didn’t object to the sale.
The Cascade County Zoning Board of Adjustment approved extensions for three Madison Food Park projects in November 2023.
County grants 2-year extension for Madison Food Park projects [2023]
The county approved permit extensions for
- Big Sky Cheese to December 2025
- Silver Falls Distillery to November 2025
- Friesen Nutrition’s vitamin trace minerals blending facility to December 2025
Pingback: Cascade County Commission to consider appeal of Madison Food Park permit extensions - The Electric
Pingback: County reverses ZBOA decision, denying Madison Food Park permit extensions - The Electric