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Montana Growing Pains

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If all goes as planned, Bill Wills' Ryan Creek ranch along I-90 will soon become a 500-lot subdivision with its own K-8 school and sewer system
By ROBERT STRUCKMAN of the Missoulian

RYAN CREEK - The late morning sun shone on the oxbow field, its hay stubble thinly crusted over with snow. The Clark Fork River flowed out of sight, past Interstate 90 to the south. The wind grabbed and flapped a tarp atop Bill Wills' long monument of hay bales.

“This was Grandpa's homestead,” said Wills, 65. He had just climbed down from the stack after loading bales onto a neighbor's flatbed Chevy. “I always said I'd never sell it. But reality comes and bites you in the butt. Nothing is forever.”



In fact, this 194-acre parcel may become Granite County's largest subdivision, worth perhaps $16 million with more than 500 lots, a commercial district and a K-8 school. It will even have its own state-regulated sewer and water utility, said Missoula insurance agent and developer Toby Hansen.

The deal isn't set in stone, Hansen said. He has an exclusive option to buy the property from Norma and Bill Wills. The closing is scheduled for September; the sale price will be more than $1 million.

Once developed, the lots will be similar in size to any in Missoula and will sell for about $30,000 apiece; the finished homes will go for $115,000 or so, Hansen said.

“It's a good price. It includes water and sewer and all the amenities,” he said.

This subdivision and a slate of other large projects across Granite County have residents contemplating an official growth policy and even zoning. The county commissioners have decided to put growth to a vote.

Between 1990 and 2000, Granite County's population grew by 1 percent, according to a study published by the Clark Fork Coalition. The Ryan Creek subdivision alone has the potential to grow the county's population by 55 percent.

“People don't want the change, but it's coming,” said Commissioner Cliff Nelson.

In the late 1880s, when he was 16, Bill Wills' grandfather immigrated to Canada from Cornwall, England. He drifted west, eventually wrangling horses in Saskatchewan and driving them south to be sold to the U.S. Army at Miles City.

“If he stole them, he didn't get caught,” Wills said with a laugh.

In Miles City, word had it that Wills' grandfather shocked the locals by crossing the Yellowstone River during the spring runoff, when the river gallops muddy and turbulent, swallowing cottonwoods and undercutting sections of riverbank.

The whole mass of horses crossed together. When his horse began to swim, the savvy Cornishman slid from the saddle and clung to the beast's tail.

Wills' grandfather eventually turned up in Philipsburg to work the silver mines. He took an interest in the mine supervisor's youngest daughter. When the supervisor, also an Englishman, turned the miner away, he sought a homestead and got the Ryan Creek portion of the Clark Fork Valley almost 50 miles from Philipsburg in 1907, according to documents at the Granite County Courthouse.

Wills' grandfather courted his sweetheart on a saddle horse and eventually married her.

The mining booms came and went. The ranch at Ryan Creek remained in the family as the decades passed. Wills' father raised him on another ranch in the Potomac area of the Blackfoot Valley.

Then in 1983, Wills' uncle died and left him the Ryan Creek property. Wills sold some of the Potomac ranch, and in 1998 sold a piece of the Ryan Creek ranch south of the interstate. Over the years, he also sold some timberland to Stimson Lumber Co.

Ryan Creek is a wonderful place to live, said Norma Wills. The couple raised three children there. The interstate made for an easy drive to Drummond for school or to Missoula for shopping. Deer and elk regularly descend the steep hillsides from the mountains.

But those same features - the interstate and the mountains - hem in the ranch. It can't get any bigger, making its viability as a commercial enterprise tenuous at best.

Wills calls it an expensive hobby.

“It ain't a living,” he said with a laugh.

If Wills harbors any regret about his decision to sell, he hides it well. But some members of his family are angry enough not to speak with him, he said.

The simple fact is this: He and Norma want to retire.

“This is my retirement,” he said. “Every penny I've made has gone into this place. I thought for years that I'd subdivide it myself, but it costs too damn much money.”

As for the proceeds of the sale, Wills intends to travel to Alaska with his wife. He will invest in something that brings a better return than ranching, he said. He'd also like to buy a little shop, a place to tinker with tractor engines.

Tim Davis, director of the nonprofit Montana Smart Growth Coalition, said Montana is poised for pell-mell, self-sustained growth like Colorado experienced 20 years ago. The number of large subdivisions with hundreds of lots has increased dramatically in the last five years, he said.

Janet Skaarland of the subdivision office in the Montana Department of Environmental Quality agreed. The number of major subdivisions is on the rise, she said.

But it isn't everywhere. A statewide database of subdivisions and lots showed a huge disparity between the hot urban counties and the slower, sometimes nonexistent, growth in rural areas, she said.

The north-south U.S. Highway 93 corridor nearest Granite County has been subdividing like crazy since 1990.

All told, 15,333 new homes were built in Lake, Ravalli and Missoula counties between 1990 and 2000. By comparison, Granite County had 150 new homes go up during that same period.

The 2000 census showed a snapshot of the stark difference between the three-county corridor and neighboring Granite County: Missoula, Lake and Ravalli counties had a combined population of 138,000. Granite had 2,830 residents.

It's odd, because even at a leisurely pace, the 27-mile drive from Ryan Creek to Missoula is easy. The Clark Fork bottomland there is beautiful.

“Frankly, I'm surprised it took this long for growth to go east from Missoula,” Davis said.

Commissioner Nelson has mixed feelings about the change that seems to be hanging in the air.

“Everybody's going, ‘Uh-oh,' but it's difficult to tell someone what they can or can't do with their property,” he said.

Some residents fear Granite County's open spaces will become urban sprawl, conjuring images of Ravalli County. Others detest the idea of regulations to govern private land use.

Elena Motta of Philipsburg opposes a county growth policy and zoning, she said. She goes to public meetings to voice her opinion. She's been to all the meetings but one, she said.

“There's no point in having a growth policy if you don't want zoning. Here's your proverbial camel's nose under the tent,” Motta said.

In the coming weeks, the county planning board will give a preliminary recommendation about the Ryan Creek subdivision to the commissioners, said chairwoman Susie Browning.

“Then we give our approval and any conditions we might have,” she said.

Before she gives her approval, Browning wants to know more about how the subdivision will impact schools, emergency services and other basic services.

As for any broad effort to limit or regulate development, Browning and her fellow commissioners won't act without a clear mandate from voters.

“This is too important,” she said.

Last week, Hansen drove a winding track past Wills' metal barn and an assortment of old tractors, trucks and a crane. A whitetail doe rested in the dappled shadow of a pine a scant 20 yards from the road.

The previous evening, Hansen had given a presentation to the board of the Drummond School District. It's fair to say the development has caught people's attention, he said.

“Every time this hits someone's desk, they have issues because of the size,” he said.

As many as 750 children will live in the subdivision, according to a state formula. That's more than the total number of public school students in all of Granite County.

A K-8 school will be built on 1 1/4 acres adjacent to a three-acre park. The subdivision will have its own volunteer fire district and an office for two full-time deputies, Hansen said.

Beavertail Sewer and Water, a privately owned utility regulated by the Public Service Commission, will service the subdivision.

Fiber optic cable runs along the interstate. That will make high-speed Internet relatively easy to offer, Hansen added. The houses will be stick-built, not modular, just like homes in Missoula's Slant Street neighborhood, he said.

On a hilltop above Ryan Creek, Hansen stopped the car and pointed up the narrow canyon, still bearing the marks of a forest fire in 2000. A reservoir there will supply water to the subdivision. No wells will draw from the Clark Fork aquifer, he said.

“We feel like we've covered most of the issues. I don't want anyone to feel like I've ambushed them,” Hansen said.
 
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