Walter Rountree - Oct 3 meeting Parking garage_housing unitsHi City Council,
TIF dollars should not go to support privately owned business projects that don't clearly benefit all businesses and the community. (It is reasonable for TIF funding to be used for
parking that is clearly intended for the use of the entire community and tourists as a whole, so that it benefits ALL downtown businesses and adds to the parking options that all residents
of Kalispell can use). If the parking garage/housing is not economically viable for the private owners that want to build it, then TIF funding should not be used to make it economically
viable for them. It would make sense to have the TIF funding available IF the developers were giving something up to benefit the community, such as providing affordable housing that
they otherwise wouldn't build. But the housing they are providing is not 'affordable' in the way that Kalispell desperately needs, despite being called 'workforce housing'. It's just
being labeled 'workforce' to sound like it satisfied the intent of the TIF funding. I suspect that they would provide the exact same housing whether they got the TIF or not. You should
call their bluff, because using TIF in this way is picking winners in our economic system and is a misuse of the intent of TIF funding.
The city owns the current parking lot and should be paid for it. Any tax breaks should be completely separate from the purchase of the lot. Structuring the deal in two separate parts
makes it a lot clearer what is actually going on here.
There is a net loss of Parking spaces. The hotel will need a certain # of spaces, as will the housing units. The number of spaces in the parking garage is less than (current spaces
+ # needed for the hotel + # needed for new apartments). If the council is OK with that, then it indicates that the council believes that the current # of parking spaces is superfluous.
If this project proceeds, then the council should insist that the # of spaces afterwards equals (current spaces + # needed for the hotel + # needed for new apartments + # of parking
spaces being removed).
City building code requires parking be provided for all new projects, and the intent of the code is that it be the net # of new spaces. You cannot ignore that existing spaces are being
taken away.
Can we PLEASE not introduce brutalist architecture to downtown Kalispell? This is a slippery slope. I don't mind 8 stories - growth and progress is inevitable after all - but allowing
a single eyesore will open the door to expansions and replacements of historic buildings over the next 20 years that will completely eliminate the historic character of our downtown.
To be kind, the optics of this whole deal are not ideal. To not be kind, this thing looks fishy! The City Council should not do anything that looks fishy. If you want to do this stuff,
rethink the whole thing so it happens in a way that is clearly not fishy.
Walter Rowntree
22 5th Ave E
Kalispell
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