Kalispell Trail & Core Area News Update - Fall 2018

Rail car tours along the future trail route provided design context.

We had an action packed summer as we began the first steps of preparing a design for the Kalispell Trail.   Over 600 people attended the open houses, workshops and meetings during the Kalispell Trail Deep Dive event the first week in June.  Another 300 community  members visited our booth at the Flathead County Fair.  As summer wound down, city staff set up a booth at Picnic in the Park and Thursday Fest with another 150 people stopping by.  We received many great comments.  As you know, the new trail will extend from the existing Meridian Trail on  Meridian Road, through the middle of town easterly to just across the underpass bridge on US 2 (Idaho). We still need your input.  Design ideas and public input will continue this fall with a series of open houses in October.
                              
The Kalispell Trail Crew, a 22-member advisory board, has met 3 times this summer with more meetings scheduled.  Their job is to review all the public comments and give city staff guidance as we continue to refine the trail design. Our goal is to have a final design in hand by early 2019 and then we will begin the difficult task of going through the “Master Design” and setting up a priority list of the things that we can afford now and what items will wait for future funding. This will truly be a community driven process. Our goal is to cast a grand vision with community groups, individuals, and future adjacent developments filling in the rest over time.  We anticipate that the railroad tracks will be coming out of Kalispell sometime next fall as CHS and Northwest Drywall finish their relocation plans to the new Glacier Rail Park. You may have seen both the CHS fertilizer plant and the CHS grain handling facility (elevator) are literally coming up out of the ground at the new rail park.  Much still needs to happen but we are hoping for track removal and trail construction beginning in spring of 2020.

A second and equally important part of this project is the construction of at least one “complete street” allowing an improved street connection between Idaho and Center. Three routes were originally selected – extending 8th Ave. West, extending 6th Ave. West, and extending Woodland Avenue. This summer we focused on the Woodland Ave. extension because we knew that while it rated fairly high in overall community support, there has been long standing neighborhood opposition dating back over 20 years from residents along Woodland Avenue.  The neighborhood (Center Street to Willow Glen) reaffirmed their opposition to this street extension during a very thorough scoping process.  Based on the strong public showing, the trail crew recommended that this option be removed.  We will continue to review the other options.      

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Purpose of TIGER

Kalispell’s Core and Rail Development project was funded by the US Department of Transportation under a TIGER grant. This grant is expressly intended for  transportation purposes.  The Kalispell project was awarded on the third submission when the development plans extended beyond the construction of an industrial rail park to include the linear park/trail running through the city in place of the old rail road tracks. This TIGER project is being built in two phases: first, construct the new industrial rail park on the east side of the city with only those infrastructure improvements required to support the rail park; second, construct the trail that replaces the existing railroad tracks running 1.6 miles east to west and construct one complete street connection from Center Street north, again with only those infrastructure improvements required by the  primary construction.