The Struggle To Be Urban

Community redevelopment, density and pricing are going to be important issues moving forward from the recession in New West urban centers.

“I deal with a lot of naysayers,” said Roger Millar, director of Missoula City/County Office of Planning and Grants. “They tell me density and mixed-use development is ugly.”

But the fact is cities, like Missoula, have fewer homes with children. So the sprawling development patterns, which are sustainable anyway, are going to be unnecessary and unwanted.

Part of the future will be looking at creative ways to redevelop existing neighborhoods, said Ben Lloyd from Comma-Q Architecture, Inc. in Bozeman.

This redevelopment will require density, which people in the West will have to become more comfortable with. [more]

State Of The Industry

In the depths of a recession, there are ample opportunities for more thoughtful planning, architecture and design, panelists said Friday at the Designing the New West conference in Bozeman.

Andy Epple, planning director for the city of Bozeman says is appears the economy is at its very bottom, and that means a slow down in the city planning office. That, he says, has allowed some discussions to happen that didn't or couldn't when times were busy.

The slow down has also seemed to stimulate good development, Epple said, referring to two projects the planning department is currently considering: a condo unit near downtown and an urban redevelopment project. [more]

Designing the New West

As the national economy comes out of the recession and sets a course for the future, changes in demographics are going to radically shift demands for housing, not only in the Mountain West, but around the country.

This was the message from Arthur C. Nelson, presidential professor and director of Metropolitan Research at the College of Architecture and Planning at the University of Utah, who was the keynote speaker at the Designing the New West Conference in Bozeman Friday.

“Now is the time to think ahead about the new paradigm that will come – it’s already well underway,” Nelson said. [more]

The Rocky Mountain West continues to grow with Utah, Colorado, Idaho, and Wyoming all in the top 10 of the nation's fastest growing states, according to an analysis from the Center for the Rocky Mountain West.

Utah is the fastest growing state in the nation, growing 2.53 percent from July of 2007 to 2008. Colorado grew 2 percent in that time period, Idaho grew 1.8 percent and Wyoming increased by 1.8 percent. Montana grew by 1.13 percent, putting it in 14th place.

This is all from an article in the spring issue of the Center's newsletter, which looks at the trends behind this growth, of which, net migration is a big one.

From the article:

Sixty-four percent of Utah’s total population growth during the year was from positive net migration. About 60% of growth by both Wyoming and Montana and about half of growth by Colorado and Idaho was positive net migration. So migration trends play a large role in regional growth patterns.

Click here for the full piece. [more]

Missoula and Billings still on top 100 growing cities list

Populations continue to climb in many of Montana’s fast-growing regions – just at much slower rates than recent boom years.

“Basically the same areas that have been growing since 2000 are still the ones growing, although it’s slowed down quite a bit,” James Sylvester, with the Bureau of Business and Economic Research at the University of Montana, said.

Economic downturn has cut growth by as much as half in many of these areas, Sylvester added, largely because of the economic downturn.

Flathead County’s population grew by nearly 2 percent between 2007 and 2008, according to population estimates released by the U.S. Census Bureau last month. The report puts the number of residents here at 88,473. That’s 14,002 more people than were counted here in the 2000 census.

Gallatin County’s 3 percent growth rate, up to 89,824 people in 2008 from 87,243 the year before, was enough to earn it a spot on the list of 100 fastest-growing counties in the country last year. Ranked at number 98, Gallatin’s growth was significant – but still sedate compared to first-placed St. Bernard Parish in Louisiana, which grew by 12.8 percent.

Billings and Missoula also claimed spots on a top-100 list, placing 70 and 80, respectively, in the ranks of fastest-growing metropolitan areas. Billings’ population grew by about 2,500 people or 1.7 percent to just more than 150,000 residents, while Missoula saw 1.6 percent growth to about 107,000 residents. [more]

'A SNAPSHOT IN TIME'

The West may be best known for its wide-open spaces, but increasingly it’s becoming an urban landscape. Many of the nation’s fastest-growing cities were in the West last year – and they’re not the places you’d think.

Sure, desert megalopolises like Phoenix and Las Vegas still claimed their share of newcomers. But growing even faster were places like Idaho Falls and Provo, Utah – small and midsized cities that out-of-staters would struggle to find on a map.

Utah and Idaho claimed four of the 10 fastest-growing metro areas in 2008, according to estimates released last week by the U.S. Census Bureau. A quarter of the top 100 metro areas were in the Intermountain West. Nineteen of the 100 fastest-growing counties were in the West, too. So were five of the nation’s largest cities.

Welcome to the new urban West. [more]

A workshop on the cleanup and reuse of brownfields will be held today, Thursday, Sept. 4, at the Missoula City Council Chambers at 140 W. Pine St. and, in the afternoon, at the Missoula County Courthouse less than a block away at 200 W. Broadway, rooms 201 and 374.

Anyone interested is welcome to attend, including local officials, developers, landowners, bankers, lenders, community leaders, attorneys and consultants as well as the general public or anyone who fits some, all or none of the labels mentioned above. (Registration is $25 and can be done online or in person at 8 a.m. at the Council Chambers.) [more]

Sheridan - Think of Wyoming as the giant ocean that it once was, with vast stretches of water between islands and atolls. Imagine traveling by boat. The more time and money it costs to reach each island, the more isolated it becomes – unless it has something singular to offer. The plain jane atolls affording nothing but tidal pools and coconuts eventually are ignored all together.

The high cost of fuel, circa 2008, has the same isolating factors on Wyoming as the oceans of yore.

Never mind the irony about how much fuel we produce. Wyoming communities, especially the small ones, depend on cheap oil. Wyoming relies on the outside world for practically everything. The more it costs to deliver those goods, the more they're going to cost the populace. [more]

The 'Megapolitan' West

It was surprising to see Govs. Bill Ritter and Jon Huntsman show up yesterday in downtown Denver. Usually it takes a natural disaster or a major fundraising opportunity to get two Western governors, of two separate parties, together in the same room. But Colorado's Ritter and Huntsman, of Utah, showed up at a press briefing at the offices of a big Denver law firm yesterday to mark the debut of … a new policy report.
[more]

From The New West Blog

Interesting story this week from the Denver Post’s Jason Blevins on who’s feeling what parts of the housing downturn at Colorado’s ritziest resorts.

The nut:

The number of home sales in Colorado’s resort communities has plummeted anywhere from 30 percent to more than 50 percent, a rare downturn in a market that has historically flourished. Resort markets that include Vail, Aspen, Steamboat, Telluride and Breckenridge are enduring record declines, according to Land Title Guarantee, which tracks sales in the high country.

Prices are still up though, and some are using those stats to maintain optimistic about the high-end Colorado market, and others say the highest of the high-end isn’t feeling any pain at all.