Neighbors appeared unimpressed with a developer’s plans for housing east of the Flathead River along River Road near Columbia Falls.

An informal meeting last week drew a heated response from the public as Laura Burnham and her associates from Berg Land Company of Victor, Idaho laid out plans for the development, which calls for 203 units on about 50 acres of what is now an open field of grass.

The plan would be to annex the property into the city and run city services like sewer under the Flathead River at the developer’s expense.

Under the proposal River Road would be moved to the east and would intersect U.S. 2 with a traffic light, although project engineer Mike Brodie conceded it would take a study by the Montana Department of Transportation to determine whether a light was warranted.

The property along the river would remain undeveloped open space, but it wasn’t clear if the old road bed would be rehabbed into green space, as River Road runs adjacent to the river bank.

Nearly everyone in the crowd, though, opposed to the project.  

Critics objected to the density, the traffic it would bring to the largely rural neighborhood and drilling the sewer line under the river, all of which were objections to previous proposed projects in the area.

They also objected to the prices of the homes in the proposed development. Burnham said the houses, which would feature a mix of cottages and larger homes, would cost between $600,000 and $1 million.

“We want to keep as many as under $1 million as we can,” she said, which brought a groan from the crowd.

Burnham said the houses were for people who already lived in the Flathead Valley, but several people noted at that price range, they were unattainable for most working-class families in Columbia Falls.

They asked why not come up with a plan that has a similar density to the Benches subdivision, which is just to the east.

That has about 50 homes on much larger lots on almost the same acreage.

Burnham said her plan needed the density to make the utility extensions and other costs work.

While the meeting was held at City Hall with about 40 people attending, it was not a formal city meeting. Burnham said the plan is to take community feedback and then present it formally to the city Planning Commission in the coming months.

Members of the crowd promised to come back even stronger.

“That’s the gateway to Glacier,” said resident Gary Hall, a former Columbia Falls mayor and former county commissioner. “We will fight you to the end.”

The land is in the county, but if developers want to annex it, it will have to go in front of the city Planning Commission and ultimately City Council.

They could develop under county zoning, but that’s currently in a bit of limbo. The initial plan was to zone the land for 2.5 acre estate-type housing. But county commissioners recently tabled that plan apparently after the landowner, River Highlands LLC, which is owned in part by James Barnett, apparently objected.

Currently it is zoned R-3 residential, so it could still have fairly high-density housing, with minimum lots of 10,000 square feet, or just under a quarter acre under county zoning.

But in order to do higher density housing, they would need city services as it couldn’t meet sewer and water regulations without some sort of community system, which would presumably take up more developable space. 

This plan, with city annexation, calls for about four units an acre.

The plan mirrors previous development proposals for the property, which were previously rejected by the Columbia Falls City-County Planning Board in 2023.

In a subsequent email to the Hungry Horse News, Burnham said the plans are malleable at this point in the process.

“The plan that we showed at the meeting is strictly conceptual. The core intention of our meeting was to voluntarily collect feedback from residents on our initial plans and, yes, of course, make modifications based on that feedback,” she said.

As far as the housing costs are concerned, she noted the median price in Columbia Falls is already just under $600,000.

“We are quite focused on delivering high quality homes and architecture to the project that belong with the beauty of the natural environment and site. That same attention will be given to the layout and covenants of the neighborhood, favoring green space, wildlife corridors, clustered density, no fencing and dark sky requirements. We were glad that a few of those priorities came up at the meeting and resonated,” Burnham said in her email. “We are excited to keep the community up to date on our progress and plans over the coming months.”

As an aside, Burnham noted that the name of the company changed from Central Street Land Company to Berg Land Company.