Rating:

5.0 (1 vote)

MISSOULA - There's a big, new player in Montana's economic base: energy. But Western Montana has yet to see a boost from the boom. In fact, Missoula is losing its reputation for growth.

The University of Montana's Bureau of Business and Economic Research (BBER) presented 2011 data and 2012 predictions to hundreds of business and community leaders at Missoula's Hilton Garden Inn on Friday. The bureau spends nearly a year planning the seminar to help Montanans understand the state's economic environment for business.

"We get a lot out of it as well," BBER Director Patrick Barkey said. The bureau's Missoula seminar is the third stop of nine.

Missoula County may have more mountains than Eastern Montana, but unlike the other side of the state, its economy is flat as a board. Economists say the declining wood products industry is a big part of the reason.

"We've had some significant closures in the Missoula economy," BBER Research Associate Paul Polzin said. "I'm talking about Smurfit Stone and I'm talking about the Bonner mill."

The county has yet to see recovery from those hundreds of lost jobs.

"Those are not easily made up," BBER Forest Industry Research Director Todd Morgan said. "When you lose a big player, it takes a lot of small players to make up for what was lost."

"No other sector of the economic base in western Montana has been able to fill the role of the wood products industry in Western Montana," Polzin said.

On top of those losses, a housing bust is hitting the western side of the state especially hard.

"A lot of the froth and growth in Western Montana over the years has been from people relocating here, building homes and that," Barkey said. "Unfortunately, that has been shut off just like a spicket out of a spout."

It's a big contrast to the Eastern side of the state where they're seeing a huge spike in energy development. While Western Montana might think that has nothing to do with them, forecasters say it will have an impact here on the west side of the state.

"Energy and commodities that're produced in Eestern Montana have to be transported to their final consumer," Polzin said. "So this is how urban Montana and this is how Western Montana will be impacted by the coal energy boom in Eastern Montana."

But Missoula County is still waiting for its own economic boost to bring it out of the recession.

"This has been a long and a severe recession here in Montana and especially here in Missoula," Polzin said.