Kalispell’s Planning Commission is circling a more precise idea for the Parkline Trail: use tax increment money to pay for the kind of connections that keep a new building from turning its back on the path.
At a Nov. 10 work session, the two members present, Cate Walker and Dustin Leftridge, supported drafting a tax-increment program that would encourage “aesthetic connections” between the trail and the lots that abut it, the Daily Inter Lake reported. “I would like to see some sort of way to incentivize … that connection to the trail so that we don’t end up with a corridor of just blank walls facing this trail and just being meh,” Walker said. Leftridge put it another way: “I don’t want to be militaristic about what’s being built there.”
That stance follows an Oct. 13 discussion in which commissioners favored flexible guardrails over strict design standards for buildings along the trail. Land next to the paved east-west path is already in the B-3 Core Area Business zone, which allows buildings up to 60 feet by right, drops minimum lot size and setbacks, and cuts parking requirements in half, city officials have said. Mayor Ryan Hunter first pushed for tighter standards, the paper reported, because he did not want the corridor to fill up with parking lots and other blank edges.
The board is not done. Members said they would come back for another work session and refine a recommendation before sending it to the City Council. No formal vote was taken Nov. 10, with only two commissioners in the room.
The trail itself replaced a railroad alignment in 2022. What gets built along it, and who pays for the nicer edges, is now a live planning question rather than a finished rule.
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