Dear Whitefish Planning Board & City Council Members,
October 8th, 2021
We bought property in Whitefish over 20 years ago and built our home just off E. Lakeshore in 2008. We fell in love with Whitefish, like most people we know, at first sight.
We love the community and its values and have regularly donated to entities like the Whitefish Foundation, Whitefish Lake Institute, Whitefish Legacy Partners, Glacier Park, etc. In fact, when the town couldn’t afford to put on the 4th of July Fireworks back in 2009, we assembled a group that has filled that gap for the past decade. Point is, we love this place, we are invested in it, we live here 6 months a year and will retire here eventually.
We have all seen a lot of growth in the past two decades, and that is to be expected. We support growth and in fact over the summer began looking at ways to support low-cost affordable housing, especially for our younger, front-line workers.
That said, we understand that this proposed project involves changing the zoning for multiple properties at the intersection of Big Mountain Road and East Lakeshore Drive to allow for commercial development and the development of 318 residential units, including 270 high-density units. As proposed, the project is inconsistent with the existing land use of the properties and does not represent the community’s vision for the area which we have researched the public records (see below)
We request that the planning board recommend denial of the Mountain Gateway PUD and Zoning Map Amendment applications as submitted. The due diligence has not been done for a development of this magnitude in regards to traffic implications, water quality, stormwater, and environmental impact. It is paramount that traffic implications be considered all the way to the viaduct as this is the only grade-separated route for emergency evacuation. And traffic jams we have on the big ski days now will be commonplace ALL YEAR ROUND at that intersection no matter what traffic control methods are imposed.
There are thoughtful ways to grow and develop our community and for the entire Flathead County…this isn’t one of those ways. There is a reason high-density housing and
commercial businesses haven’t been proposed for this neighborhood and intersection – it flies in the face of the city ‘charter’ on growth policy, and given structural constraints, no improvement in road, stoplight, circle, etc infrastructure can remotely accommodate the ensuing traffic levels.
We all want a Whitefish that responds to growth needs, yet never, never loses its fundamental character. This isn’t Big Sky, this isn’t Aspen or Telluride, this is Whitefish. We owe it to future generations to do the right thing, and grow thoughtfully and not burden them with permanent mistakes.