Story Mill Center Approvals Underway

By Lucia Stewart, 3-21-07

The Story Mill Center is well on its way to breaking ground early this fall.

On Monday night, the Story Mill Center was unanimously approved for a growth policy amendment by the Bozeman City Commission, with Mayor Krauss absent. On Tuesday night, it was unanimously approved by the planning board for zoning changes to increased residential and rearranged the current industrial zoning, which awaits final approval from the City Commission on April 2.

If this rate continues, they will begin pre-selling home sites by mid-summer.

Growth Policy Amendments are modification to the Bozeman 2020 Community Plan, the directional tool in guiding the City’s future. It is an extra step in order to make sure developers in Bozeman are meeting the needs of the community and not creating contradictions to how Bozeman desires to look and feel in 15 years.

Although the Story Mill Center falls just beyond the Bozeman City limits, it falls just within the boundary of the 2020 plan’s map under the “future urban” designation, hence needing this amendment.

Within the 46 letters of support from Bozeman citizens on the Story Mill Project’s Growth Policy Amendment, many commended the project as being a highlight for how the City should grow.

“We are coming at this project as ‘It would be cool to do this.’ Its very progressive and its a way the needs to go,” said Chaucer Silverson of GoBuild, Inc. “People support what are doing even if they aren’t going to live here, because our missions and values is assisting Bozeman in growing well.”

Many of the letters described how the Story Mill Center sees eye-to-eye with the 2020 Plan values: City centers, not corridors; community-based neighborhoods; a strong sense of place; integration within the city’s networks; urban density – not sprawl; and preservation of natural amenities. There were also 8 letters of opposition.

The Story Mill Center team, consisting of GoBuild, Inc., GBD Architects, Hyalite Engineers, Comma-Q Architecture and Kath Williams, is on track for their Planned Unit Development hearing in mid-July.