TIF and opportunity zones - two things the City of Missoula cannot pass up.
Here’s how it’s framed in the local media:
“The city acquired the Mountain Water building on West Broadway several years ago when it purchased the utility. The city this month also purchased property off Scott Street, which could allow Public Works to leave the water building for its new Scott Street location, thus making the water building available for redevelopment.
The city earlier this year also purchased the Sleepy Inn with an eye on future redevelopment. The property sits on West Broadway not far from the water building. A number of properties that sit in between are either on the market or have owners willing to sell.
Add it up and the corridor is ripe for new investment, revitalization, and change.”
We all knew that something fishy was going on when the Sleepy Inn was purchased by the city.
Now it seems they’re going to move the water company from its current location on West Broadway over to the new Scott Street Development project.
This will allow the city to leverage both their Sleepy Inn and their Missoula Water building into some serious cash as the rich developers salivate over what could be built on that huge tract of land.
The Scott Street Project is 19 acres and the Sleepy Inn/Mountain Water area is another 16 acres, giving the city 35 acres of prime land in the city center to play around with, and make money from.
Today we’ll focus on the 16 acres the media is ignoring, that right up against the river.
The few reports we’ve seen so far put an idea out that the myriad of properties between Missoula Water and the Sleepy Inn have owners that are “willing to sell.”
Is that true, or just wishful thinking? I dunno, but with property prices inflating more than anything else in this country right now (mainly due to the influx of people fleeing the riotous, shutdown cities) it’s a good bet that many will sell and get out of this expensive town while they still can.
Let’s take a look at this land (click on the images to see them larger):
Sleepy Inn Redevelopment, Missoula
The Sleepy Inn is in the upper, lefthand corner. Missoula Water is the large white building a few doors to the right of it.
Now let me highlight the area that will be redeveloped, and then show you a street-level view of actually how large a space this is.
Sleepy Inn Development
That’s not the best image, but it gives you an idea of how far it is from the Missoula Water building in the foreground to the Sleepy Inn (you can kind of see the sign way down the street).
As you can see in the red box above, it’s a huge rectangular block of land that will be redeveloped.
Currently they have two components of it, but they need to get rid of the businesses that are there to unlock the full potential of the project.
These are National Coating & Supplies paint store, Majestic Madness beauty salon, and Wooden Images gift shop. It shouldn’t prove difficult to move them.
But I don’t think the city or the developers will want to stop there.
No, I envision a project that's 3 stages and could be developed all at once or over the course of many years. It looks something like this:
The 3-Stage Redevelopment of the Sleepy Inn and Missoula Water properties
If you get rid of the pot shop and the oil change place to the right of Missoula Water, you have the whole block from the bridge on Russell Street to California Street.
South of that huge tract is stage 2, which consists of nothing more than a huge empty parking lot for Missoula Water as well as some safety lock business. That will be redeveloped with ease.
Just south of that is stage 3, with a BBQ joint and some rundown buildings/homes.
The real lynchpin of the whole 3-stage project is getting Blue Ribbon Auto and Western Cider Company to move so you can have it all. I think some serious incentives will be put in place to ensure those businesses play ball and relocate.
Then the city and the developers can have a huge area of land that’s probably 30 to 40 acres in size and worth tens of millions of dollars.
Your tax dollars will have been the driving force making this all happen, and then the whole project will be handed off to the private sector for some kind of hotel or event center or rich condos.
Right now the only people working on this are city bureaucrats that you pay with the money they take out of your paycheck.
Those bureaucrats just hired their buddies in Florida for $65,000 to help them study how to get this project off the ground.
No, I don’t see any affordable housing coming to such a pretty piece of land along a beautiful river that rich out-of-staters would give their eye-teeth to live at.
I’d say the common workers and taxpayers of Missoula are going to get screwed, but the truth is they already have been.
When the Sleepy Inn was purchased, it was clear something was afoot, something fishy was going on.
Now the pieces are falling into place, and the picture is getting clearer.
Keep your eye on this area of the city, and keep your eye out for any news stories that mention it.
I think the city will be as quiet as they can on this.
They don’t want you to know what’s really happening, what you're really paying for.
