Resident challenging apartment rebuild

The neighbor of a former apartment building that burned down in two fires last summer is appealing a Columbia Falls Board of Adjustment decision that would allow the landowner to rebuild the same number of apartments on the lot.

Third Avenue West resident Mark Cahill last month filed an appeal in Flathead County District Court. According to court documents, Cahill, who lives across the street from the former apartment building, claims allowing Chad Ross of CNS Properties to rebuild all nine apartments would “create an unbearable nuisance per se and at law, impose undue conditions due to increased traffic, overflow parking, overcrowding, noise and impede or prevent emergency access and escape.”

The apartment building caught fire on Aug. 2. The blaze destroyed the main structure, which had nine units. An adjacent cottage survived.

Three days later what was left of the nine units caught fire again in what was deemed as a suspicious blaze.

The apartments were originally built in 1969 and Cahill claims the building was illegally divided over the years so that it had nine units, as the building only had four natural gas meters. City planners, however, dispute that.

Cahill claims it originally had five units and eight bedrooms. The remaining were added in the 1980s.

The building did, however, have nine electric meters, though with the cottage, that would make 10 units total.

The Columbia Falls Board of Adjustment concurred that there were nine units in the one building and issued a variance to rebuild on the property in November.

At the time of the board’s decision,CNS’s case for a variance was bolstered, said city attorney Justin Breck, by the fact that the one-family residential feel of the neighborhood has already been altered by the two 7-unit apartment complexes built in the early 2000s, just north of Ross’s property.

The developer needed a variance to rebuild because the zoning in that area is for single family residential (CR-3). The property was annexed into the city about 21 years ago as a legal, nonconforming use.

The new configuration that was approved for the CNS property allows for about 8,000 square feet of three new buildings over the roughly half-acre lot. That would include a four-plex, a triplex and duplex. The duplex and triplex would have parking toward Cahill’s home.

The old building was about 4,000 square feet and all the parking and buildings were on the east end of the lot, leaving most it it lawn and trees. The new design spreads the buildings out more over the lot, and some would be much closer to Cahill’s home, which is down the hill on Third Avenue West.

Cahill asked the court for a temporary restraining order and temporary injunction to stop any new construction in late December. That was denied. Judge Heidi Ulbricht originally was hearing the case, but that has since been changed to Judge Amy Eddy, which has resulted in a delay on further hearings on the matter.

No construction has started. City attorney Stephanie Breck briefed city council last week on the appeal. Council made no comment.