WYE — There’s been a lot of talk about developing land west of Missoula at the Wye.
The developer, Grass Valley Gardens, owns a 187 acre parcel of the Wye’s land.
“This makes sense as a place to try to invest and, and do something with,” shared developer Matt Mellott.
If you drive down Highway 10, there are many businesses, but as Mellott noted, there are very few homes. “We know a number of the employers around here and a constant thing you hear is there's nowhere for our team, our people, to live,” he said.
County Planner, Jennie Dixon explained that the land was zoned back in 2022 to allow for residential development.
“It’s actually a minimum residential density. You have to have at least this many houses in order to do a development,” said Dixon.
"Our section is zoned neighborhood residential. So, that's the 8 to 1 unit per acre,” Mellott added.
If approved, Grass Valley Gardens plans to bring hundreds of places for people to live to the area over the next decade or so.
Dixon told MTN, “218 lots on 66 acres, they're gonna have about 445 dwellings and that's gonna be in the form of single family, single dwellings, duplexes all the way up to some apartment buildings. We’re talking 12 years for these 445 homes.”
Since some of the land is used for agriculture already, the plans for this proposed subdivision incorporate agriculture into the design. This is why they’re calling it an agri-hood. Mellott said, “There's market gardens, might be 5 to 10 acres and it's run by different small scale farmers and so that becomes the center point of the community.”
Pointing at the phase map of the Grass Valley Garden development, Dixon detailed, “So, this is the residential component and then there's commercial component down here and some agricultural community centers in this area, they've really designed this whole development around agriculture.”
While Missoula County is working on a larger infrastructure plan for the Wye area, Mellott said the Grass Valley Gardens team is planning to make their own sewer and road system. Still though, those must be up to county standards. “Engineering water samples, drilling wells to test wells, background sampling of the water. There's certain there's a traffic impact study that's required,” Mellott shared.
A concern Mellott noted from this past fall’s neighborhood meetings is: if this development is approved and people move in, that will add pressure to nearby schools. “One of the first people we met with is Les Meyer at the Frenchtown school district. We need to need to be mindful of what the impact we will have on the school district. We have set aside is a three acre chunk to donate to the Frenchtown school district for an elementary school.”
There are two upcoming meetings where community members can share more of their views:
6 p.m. on Tuesday, July 16
2 p.m. on Thursday, Aug. 8
Both meetings will take place in the Sophie Moiese Room of the Missoula County Courthouse.
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