Realtor urges city to take lead on Discovery Square

Bill Dakin, a Realtor with Re/Max Mountain View, has called on the city to re-examine its position on the former Glacier Discovery Square site and to take a lead role in finding a public use for the former Bank of Columbia Falls building.

In a Nov. 25 letter to the Columbia Falls City Council and city manager Susan Nicosia, Dakin listed numerous reasons why the 48-year-old building on Nucleus Avenue is not suitable for the types of commercial uses that could help revitalize uptown Columbia Falls.

“Seeing it brown-out this summer and begin to blight what was the prettiest block on our main street is a sad thing,” Dakin said. “It affects all of Nucleus Avenue and casts a negative pall in the tourist season.”

Whitefish Credit Union took over the site after the First Best Place nonprofit group could no longer make payments on its mortgage. The site has been on the market for eight months, Dakin pointed out, and “we’ve learned it is not likely to ever be a bank again.”

The block-long park-like site is far too big to be a bank in the Internet age, and the $16,000 a year tax burden “is prohibitive for any conceivable off-highway retail usage,” Dakin said.

While its size and “multiple, spacious” underground vaults has attracted buyers interested in light manufacturing or shipping centers, the former Discovery Square site won’t attract a big-box store developer, Dakin said. Those stores went to Kalispell, a 25-minute drive away, and “large-building retail here is a gone goose,” he said.

But the site’s size and location could attract an entity that doesn’t need to worry about property taxes — a church.

“Based on our experience with large buildings with high tax burdens, there is a greater than 60 percent chance now that this property’s repurposing will be as a church,” Dakin said, noting that two movie theaters in downtown Kalispell and numerous buildings with rural highway frontages have become churches.

Columbia Falls city manager Susan Nicosia later noted that churches are not an allowed permitted or conditional use in the business zoning district for uptown Columbia Falls. Anyone wanting to use the former bank building as a church would need to change the zoning, which would be extremely difficult.

In his letter, Dakin noted that a multi-function community center, as First Best Place had envisioned, could be a better use for the site. He said there's a need for meeting and conference space, banquet rooms and a teen center in Columbia Falls. Even the Chamber of Commerce’s tourist information office could be moved to the site as a way to draw more tourists off the U.S. 2 strip and uptown, he said.

First Best Place’s goal of relocating the branch library to Discovery Square as an anchor for a community center deserves a second look, Dakin said. He blamed in part the indifference or resistance of city officials and the Flathead County commissioners for that idea being cast aside.

“The Discovery Square concept was a visionary one, impaled by bad timing and by not bringing together all the forces and players that this town could muster for a true multi-purpose facility, with diverse stakeholders,” he said.

Dakin also noted that while the sale price “could be surprisingly attractive,” much more money would needed to remodel and modernize the building and later to maintain it.

“It would be a big, bold step, inviting planning and creative sources of revenue,” he said. “It’s a worthy challenge to the community’s leaders.”