Growth warriors: the battle against sprawl

published on Thursday, March 13, 2008 4:26 AM MDT

By DAVE RICHARDSON Chronicle Staff Writer

Population growth: more than 20 percent since 2000. New single-family home lots approved in two years: more than 2,000. Subdivisions: popping up like crabgrass and eating up acre after acre of historic, precious farmland.

Gallatin County is exploding, and finding ways to guide that explosion so it doesn’t destroy the way of life its residents cherish is proving to be a tough battle.

Randy Carpenter, a land-use planner with the Sonoran Institute, said the seemingly out-of-control growth the county is experiencing is an all-too common scenario. Ravalli, Missoula, and Lewis and Clark counties are facing similar growth patterns -- and, like Gallatin, are considering zoning initiatives as a solution. All have also sought some level of help from the Sonoran Institute.

“We see this all over, the same types of issues in communities all over the west,” Carpenter said.

Carpenter and his cohorts are smart-growth warriors, championing land-use policies that promote the community values that make locales like the Gallatin Valley such great places to live.

The policies the institute champions, and that Gallatin County is considering, include ways to: combat rural sprawl; protect agricultural areas and open space; direct density to appropriate areas; and find a balance among those competing demands.

“With traditional land-use principles, most growth occurs in towns, because that’s where it makes sense, and that’s where the infrastructure and services are,” Carpenter said. “But over the past quarter-century n in this county and throughout the West n those land-use patterns have started to change, and we’re seeing more dispersion of development out into the countryside.”

Combat sprawl

That dispersion n known in the trade as sprawl n creates serious, negative impacts, Carpenter said. And combating sprawl tops of the list of smart-growth philosophies Carpenter said Gallatin County needs.

Sprawling rural subdivisions eat up prime agricultural land, pile infrastructure costs onto the backs of taxpayers, degrade water quality from widespread use of wells and septic systems and damage wildlife habitat, Carpenter said.

“What we need to do is return to those traditional patterns of growth, because it just makes more sense,” he said. “What thoughtful communities throughout the West are doing is finding ways to guide that growth back into their towns.”

Smart growth also applies to the edges of existing communities, where the temptation has been to create large subdivisions with homes on multi-acre lots that can be sold at a premium, Carpenter said. But that idea brings the worst aspects of sprawl closer to communities, he said.

Directed density

Creating higher-density neighborhoods with a lively mix of housing types that are close-knit, safe for pedestrians and children, near amenities, and full of open spaces such as walking trails and parks isn’t difficult, Carpenter said. More importantly, he said, it can be profitable for developers.

“Developers know how to do this profitably n to make smaller neighborhoods, walkable neighborhoods that are linked to other neighborhoods,” he said. “In fact, the demand is not being met by the supply.”

As a prime example, Carpenter points to Valley West, a 310-acre development with 1,630 living units at the western edge of Bozeman. Teeming with uniquely designed homes, duplexes, apartments and condominiums on small lots served by alleys, the neighborhood boasts miles of trails and almost 100 acres of open space.

“These things happen for a reason,” Carpenter said, noting both changing markets and changing ideas among county officials.

One key indicator of those changes, he said, is Gallatin County’s sudden embrace of countywide zoning.

If approved, those regulations will limit growth in rural areas, while directing it to the edges of cities and towns.

“We’re trying to balance the interests of the community in terms of growth management and the interests of people who own property,” said Randy Johnson, manager of subdivision review for the county planning department. “We’re trying to direct growth to where it’s needed and appropriate, and limit it where it can’t be supported, while at the same time providing incentives to do both.”

Find balance

Johnson said the work requires a delicate balance, and one that the Sonoran Institute has been a big help in finding.

“They bring in a lot of experience from their interactions with similar type growth communities throughout the West,” Johnson said. “They’re trying to bring good people together, and to bring forward information and research that shows other success stories.”

Carpenter said Gallatin County’s proposed zoning plan will limit building densities in unincorporated areas of the county to one home per 160 acres of land, but also allow a great deal of flexibility. And property owners will have a number of options that will actually increase the value of their land, he said.

Johnson said one key option would give rural landowners who might not be able to subdivide their property the ability to sell development credits to developers who can use them to increase the density of projects in designated high-growth areas. Like commodities, the credits could be bought and sold. But it’s a complicated system that requires a lot of careful finessing, Johnson said.

“Sonoran helped us figure out how to put that into practice, and helped us determine what would be an economically viable regulation that will work, where buyers will actually seek to purchase development credits, and where we have a balanced market,” Johnson said.

Owners could also increase the number of lots they can get out of their land by putting home sites in one area of the land while conserving the rest as open space n something called clustered development.

Provide education

For generations, zoning has been a four-letter word for most Montanans, but the more that land owners are educated about what zoning actually means, the less hostile they usually are toward it, Carpenter said.

“I think that there’s a lot of support out there with a lot of land owners who want to stay in agriculture and see this as something that will provide a certain amount of predictability for them,” Carpenter said.

Shaun Morrell, a planner with the Ravalli County Planning Department, said a citizen-initiated interim zoning ordinance went into effect last year as a stopgap to give officials time to come up with a more comprehensive zoning document. That ordinance expires later this year, and, thanks at least in part to help from the institute, Ravalli County is ready to move ahead, Morrell said.

“It’s really good to have someone come who’s been to other communities throughout the West, and to know that this isn’t a unique situation to us,” Morrell said. “A lot of other high growth counties have been through this, and we can get through it, too.”

• Printer friendly version
• Subscribe

Reader Comments