In a county prone to construction boom-and-bust cycles, how does a planning director anticipate the next big upswing in subdivision activity?

It’s a question Flathead County Planning Director BJ Grieve pondered as he began to consider his department’s budget for the coming fiscal year.

“I came here in 2004, and I’ve been through a big ol’ boom and a big ol’ bust,” Grieve said.

As he put together the data for a graph that would chart those up-and-down construction cycles, the challenge was how to compile data from 20 years ago. The Planning Office’s electronic log books only go back to when the Tri-City Planning Office emerged and the Flathead Regional Development Office was disbanded.

That didn’t give Grieve enough years to truly track the county’s cyclical growth, so his administrative staff pored through pre-2001 records to extract county subdivision information as far back as 1992.

“1992 was the cutoff to get consistent data,” Grieve said. “Prior to that it’s incomplete. Certain types of files didn’t exist then.

“We spot-checked some visible spikes, like in 1994,” he said, to verify accuracy of the data.

Once the 20-year numbers for major and minor subdivisions, final plats, zoning map amendments and conditional-use permits were strung together, the boom-and-bust pattern was evident.

The number of subdivision projects approved in the county during the “boom” of the early 1990s peaked in 1994 at 70 final plats before taking a nosedive over the next four years to 24 final plats in 1998.

In 2001, the number of final plats was at its lowest point in the county’s jurisdiction during the 20-year lookback, but it wasn’t too long before the next boom was at hand.

By 2004 a record 1,547 lots were created for projects OK’d by the county and the three incorporated cities of Kalispell, Whitefish and Columbia Falls.

In 2005 the record was broken again, with 2,411 lots receiving preliminary approval, an increase of 26 percent from the year before. Just in the county — excluding the three cities — an all-time record 92 final plats and 87 major subdivisions were approved in 2005.

The city of Kalispell’s subdivision development peaked the following year in 2006 when the city approved a record 582 lots in 30 subdivisions. 

In total, the valley’s four planning jurisdictions gave final plat approval to 1,160 residential and commercial lots in 2006.

The last four years, though, have reflected the lingering national recession, dropping planning activity in Flathead County to levels below what was happening in 1992.

As of November 2012, the county had 51 preliminary-plat approvals on the books and about 1,200 “entitled” lots ready to build on.

 These days, there’s a promise of renewed construction activity in the air.

“It would appear from the phone calls and office visits from many people we’ve worked with in the past” that projects may start to gel, Grieve said. “They’re asking questions, ‘What about putting a subdivision here?’ They’re running things by us, and we haven’t had a lot of ideas thrown at us in the last two years. It’s noteworthy.”

Over the past few days Grieve said he’s had inquiries for several potential projects.

“I had a meeting with a guy who’s batting around the concept of 20 lots southwest of Kalispell in the Smith Valley area,” he said.

Another inquiry involved a 200-unit project on 200 acres northwest of Kalispell. Yet another inquiry was focused on commercial and multifamily development around Glacier Park International Airport.

As of November 2012 the county had 1,200 lots with preliminary plat approval.

Columbia Falls City Manager Susan Nicosia said she’s noticed that same kind of interest.

“There are just hints of movement,” she said. “We’re not seeing applications, just some discussions.”

Nicosia said a chart for Columbia Falls planning activity since 1992 would look similar to what the county has experienced. At the height of the boom six to seven years ago Columbia Falls experienced an unprecedented 23 percent population increase.

Currently Columbia Falls has about 200 lots ready to build on, mostly in the Talbot Road area in subdivisions such as River Terrace, Wildcat and Talbot Pines.

A land inventory in Kalispell shows the city has plenty of available commercial and residential land. 

A study done last year as part of a review of Kalispell’s growth policy showed 892 final platted lots, 1,343 preliminary platted lots and another 5,304 lots of approved planned-unit developments.

Kalispell Planning Director Tom Jentz recently said construction this year is off to a good start.

“We’re running at four times the level we did the first quarter of last year,” he said. 

During the first quarter of 2012 building permits were issued for eight new homes in Kalispell; this year the city already has issued 32 permits for new homes.

“There’s significant interest expressed by our builders,” Jentz said. “It’s looking to be a busy year for residential construction, and commercial activity is bubbling quite well.”

Site preparation is underway on a 42,000-square-foot Cabela’s store in north Kalispell, and other commercial projects in the pipeline include a new Volkswagen dealership in south Kalispell.

 The key reason for tracking planning activity over two decades is to use that history for budgeting purposes, Grieve said, “so we can be as responsive as we can.”

The numbers allowed him to determine what a “normal” year of planning activity is for Flathead County. 

Using median annual values, he determined the county can expect to receive roughly 17 major subdivision applications per year, with 26 minor subdivisions and 35 final plats approved.

He estimated an average of 12 zoning map amendments annually and 19 conditional-use permit applications.

“We’re trying to understand, if we’re returning to something — what is something?” Grieve said.

The median is that number where half the numbers are lower and half the numbers are higher. If different from the average, the total of those numbers divided by the number of items in that set, and in this case the median is a more applicable means of looking at the data, Grieve said.

Using those median values, he determined that about 80 percent of subdivision applications go to final plat, and the other 20 percent die or expire for lack of activity.

“That’s useful to know,” he said.

The Planning Office is funded two ways, through fee revenue and a 2-mill levy county taxpayers pay for planning in rural areas.

Fee revenue pays for the staff time and resources needed to process various applications such as subdivision, zoning map amendments and conditional use permits. 

That revenue has dropped steadily since the construction downturn, from a high of $470,000 in fiscal year 2006 to just $50,000 for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2012.

“This year we’re on track to receive more fee revenue,” Grieve said. “We’re trending roughly at $60,000.”

The 2-mill levy amounts to about $7 a year for a home with a market value of $250,000. That money accounts for just over $329,000 of the county Planning Office’s $387,784 budget for the current fiscal year.

When the last construction boom went bust, the county planning staff lost the equivalent of five full-time employees and has since regained only a part-time code compliance technician.

 Features editor Lynnette Hintze may be reached at 758-4421 or by email at lhintze@dailyinterlake.com.