Plans for a hotel in Columbia Falls are taking formal shape. 

The Columbia Falls City-County Planning Board will host a public hearing at 6:30 p.m. Oct. 13 for a planned unit development for the hotel adjacent to Pinewood Park at the former Norem property. 

The City Council will hold a subsequent hearing Oct. 19 at 7 p.m. 

Ruis Holdings has plans to build an 82-room, three-story hotel on the property, with 64 rooms in the first phase.

Mick Ruis, who recently purchased several properties in the city, is the primary developer.

The land is zoned as Commercial Business 2, which allows for hotels, although there are limits involving height and parking. The building would need a variance for height — city codes call for a maximum height of 45 feet while the applicant seeks 47 feet. 

Ruis also is seeking parking variances, noting a 3,000-square-foot conference room inside the hotel primarily will be used for day activities while the hotel will be used at night. 

In addition, the applicant is seeking a five-foot setback from the building to the Pinewood Park property line since a portion of the building would encroach on the standard 10-foot setback. The hotel itself would be on the west side of a 2.55-acre parcel and the parking would be to the east along Second Avenue West.

The property has been all but vacant for decades. It used to have row houses and a trailer park. All but one of the houses have been torn down.

One of the City Council’s top goals has been to attract a hotel to the city. The hotel will not be a chain but will be independently owned and operated, City Manager Susan Nicosia said previously. 

The developers came up with this plan to avoid having to move a main sewer line that runs through the property.

They have indicated they would like to break ground this fall to be open by next summer.

In other developments, a new pizza place and a bakery are planned for Nucleus Avenue.

The bakery will be in the former Pitman doctor’s office and the pizza restaurant will be in the former Back in Time Antique shop.

One of the challenges of putting restaurants and other businesses that need large amounts of water in these older buildings is the water lines — they’re only three-quarter-inch lines and need to be upgraded, Nicosia noted.

She said in the future, the city’s tax increment finance district could help businesses with those expenses, either through cost-sharing agreements or through loans. 

On the industrial side of things, SmartLam is expected to expand its Columbia Falls operation to the industrial park on the north end of the city. The SmartLam building would be 140,000 square feet with two production lines.

The city needs to extend sewer and other services to the property, including broadband Internet access.

Before the real estate crash in 2008, builders would go out and build a building hoping to attract businesses. No more. Now they want a tenant in place, Nicosia noted.

As for the future of the Columbia Falls Aluminum Co. plant, she said she envisions it becoming a residential housing area or resort after the site is cleaned up.

She noted that only 70 acres of the 3,200-acre property were actually used for industrial purposes. 

While there is concern about the site being declared a Superfund site, Nicosia noted that the pollution is contained on the site itself.

“This isn’t Libby,” she noted, where cancer-causing asbestos was found throughout the town.

Over the years, the city has sponsored over $1 million in economic loans to businesses, she said. Right now the city has about $250,000 available to loan through its community development block grant program she said.