Saddlehorn designed around community involvement

By LAURA BEHENNA

Bigfork Eagle

Doug Averill of Bigfork last week acquired 240 acres known as the Whitney property just north of the Averill Ranch, off highway 209. The purchase will allow Saddlehorn, LLC, to go ahead with a full planned development of 320 building units on 800 acres.

Averill doesn’t see himself as a developer, but he chose to create Saddlehorn as “a defensive move to protect the viewshed above Flathead Lake Lodge and Bigfork,” he said. He and his family have owned and operated Flathead Lake Lodge south of Bigfork for more than 60 years.

It took about three years to work out a deal to buy the Whitney property from a Bigfork developer who had planned a higher-density project, Averill said. He has no intention of saturating the ridgeline with condos; in fact, he plans to set aside the hill on the Saddlehorn property as a natural park where Saddlehorn members can hike and horseback-ride.

“We’ve dedicated that to open space,” Averill said.

Fifty percent of the land at Saddlehorn will be open space, he said. The forest on the land has already been thinned to make it safer for fire prevention and fire-fighting if that becomes necessary. Vegetable and flower gardens and parks will be scattered around the property, encouraging residents to explore and enjoy being outside.

“People really don’t know anything about the great outdoors anymore,” Averill said. “They’ve been away from it too long.”

In addition, “we’ve crafted [Saddlehorn] heavily around family interaction,” he said. The development will incorporate plenty of child-friendly activities that encourage kids to be active and learn about nature, history, culture and outdoor skills. Besides swimming, an equestrian center, a sports park and a playing field, Saddlehorn will even have a schoolhouse.

“It’s all about discovery,” Averill’s business partner, Jim Frizzell, said.

Averill envisions Saddlehorn as “a blown-up version of Flathead Lake Lodge.” His father, Les, built the lodge in the 1940s and generations of visitors have come back year after year for “a Montana experience based on simplicity and the beauty of the natural environment.” Averill said the lodge has a 70 percent visitor return rate, one of the highest in the hospitality business, and that many guests have bought homes nearby. He expects more lodge guests to become Saddlehorn homeowners too.

Although Saddlehorn will be private, Averill and Frizzell envision their project as including and enhancing the Bigfork community. A variety of public events will be held on-site, including dinners cooked by local amateur chefs and demonstrations by local craftspeople. Averill noted that Flathead Lake Lodge held 34 public events last year. He believes in the philosophy that “the best places are for everybody,” he said.

“The community will feel very much a part of [Saddlehorn],” Frizzell said. “We want it to be interactive, not the big ‘E’ for exclusive.”

Saddlehorn will have a pioneer theme, with cabin-style log homes that incorporate up-to-date technology, including “best-in-class windows, doors and insulation,” Averill said. “It’s rustic, but disguised in that theme is the latest and best of everything.”

Each home will have a self-contained “combined heat and power unit” that generates both heat and electricity using propane or natural gas. These units are designed to keep working even during power outages, Averill said.

The homes will be built with less square footage than the typical sprawling new house. “We’re taking the approach that less is better,” Averill said. “Rather than spending the money on square footage, we’re spending it on quality.”

To conserve energy, Saddlehorn will minimize the use of cars by designing the outdoor areas so that people can easily walk, bicycle or ride electric carts to other parts of the property. A shuttle bus will take residents into Bigfork and to the marina at Woods Bay, which Averill and Frizzell will redevelop with fewer, more attractive buildings and more family-friendly amenities, such as a children’s lodge.

All vehicles operating on Saddlehorn grounds will be hybrids or run on alternative fuels. Even the heavy equipment involved in building the project will run on biodiesel rather than regular diesel fuel. Saddlehorn staff will be able to live on-site so that they don’t have to drive to work from another town that has more affordable housing than Bigfork can offer. The property will have natural landscaping rather than large lawns, and local craftspeople will apply their talents to the look of the place.

“These are things we should be doing — and everybody should be doing,” Averill said. The cost of building these kinds of sustainable elements into a project is equal to or less than that of regular construction if done during the design phase, before the project is built, he claimed.

A percentage of every home sale will go the Saddlehorn Community Foundation, which will benefit Bigfork directly, Averill said. Projects funded could include preserving the river corridor, building sidewalks or installing lighting.

Averill wants to set “new standards of what people expect of a developer.”

“In the long run, over time, we hope this will set an example” of what conscientious, responsible development can look like, he said. He hopes Saddlehorn will serve as a model for developers who want to do better than chop up the land, get as much money as they can from it and run, leaving the homeowners to sort out any problems.

Averill and Frizzell don’t intend Saddlehorn as a place for speculative buyers who plan to sell in a few years to make some cash. Rather, “we’re hoping to craft a neighborhood that has generational longevity,” Frizzell said. “We want them to see this as something they pass down through the generations.”

“We’re trying to build a strong sense of village and community,” Averill said. “It really is a continuation of Bigfork.”

Many of Averill’s ideas for Saddlehorn evolved from his years of watching what guests at Flathead Lake Lodge have enjoyed.

“I’m a firm believer that people are looking for simplicity,” he said.