The Wye Mullan Plan

Too Dense or Not Too Dense

By Courtney Lowery, 4-12-05

A few things are starting to shake out (and up) of the massive final draft of the Wye Mullan West plan. Last night's meeting highlighted a few of the concerns and criticisms that had surfaced in earlier meetings, including those dealing with open-space, parks and how to treat the land closest to the airport runways. But the biggies have to do with two of our favorite issues: traffic and housing density.

The traffic on Reserve Street already makes us want to poke our eyes out. That light at Mullan Road and Reserve makes us want to do that with some sort of dull object. All of this has been documented heavily by both the city and the state (though the documents leave out any mention of eye-poking, which could be counterintuitive.) And, the plan does lay out traffic concerns thoroughly. However, there doesn't seem to be any conclusion on the traffic issue (and as city-county planner Laval Means points out, is open-ended for a reason, telling New West that "We feel like we have the tools out there," but that it's hard to make final traffic plans until the development is underway.)

Indeed the traffic issue won't be dealt with easily. The new developments will be using Mullan Road as a "minor arterial" and that promises to stress the hell out of that Mullan/Reserve interchange. That, in the end, could be just one more reason for the city and the county to push the unspoken "Western bypass" - an idea, long bandied about but rarely addressed by public officials, for a new road parallel to Reserve St. to the West, or conceivably an extended Kona Ranch Rd./ Big Flat Rd. route. If the traffic concerns aren't addressed right here right now in conjunction with this plan, five years from now, the city and the county will bring that bypass idea to us and we'll have no choice but to like it.

Then there's our other favorite: density. It sounds like half the critics of the plan say it doesn't offer dense enough building, while the other half says it's too dense. (From what I've seen however, it looks to be pretty flexible both ways). Means says much of the density discussion now centers on a shift in the latest revision about where the density is in relation to the airport runways, which changed because the airport changed its mind about what would be safe. Means appropriately calls it a "moving target," both literally in the planning process and emotionally for a lot of the citizens involved.

Some landowners who want to develop property near the airport are up in arms because the plan now calls for non-residential open space. Folks in the areas that now have more dense development are also fired up, claiming the plan compromises the ruralness of their area. Take, for instance this quote from the Missoulian's coverage of the meeting last night: "The high density they want to put around us isn't in concert with the neighborhood the way it is," said Todd Ferris, the spokesman for the 44 Ranch Estates subdivision (which has one house per acre). "I don't think people move to Montana to live in eight houses per acre. Maybe I'm wrong. But to me it's not Big Sky Country."

I'm still not so sure where I personally stand on high-density development (I don't think I would live in housing development between the river and 3rd Street along Reserve Street for instance) but I'm going to go out on a limb and say that if we let every subdivision build one house on each acre, we're going to gobble up the land in Big Sky Country pretty damn quick and I'm not cool with that either.

Overall, density is an issue that we don't think can be worked out in just one plan, even one as massive as the Mullan Wye. Montanans will likely never agree on what we think the density of our landscape should look like. But at least we're discussing it, so there's a start.

The real question here is where do we Missoulians want this whole discussion to go? While the draft is in its final stages, the plan still has a long way to go to get the city-county stamp of approval, so we're curious to hear what you think.

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