City Council Said No To The Wolf

by Travis Mateer

By the time I arrived at Council chambers yesterday morning I was already riled up, which can happen quickly in a town where one has so much personal history, like I do with Missoula. If you reference a local anecdote about the illusion of female solidarity, for example, you must be prepared to run into that example on your way to City Council.

I was at Council on Thursday morning because the developer holding a historic hospital building hostage at Fort Missoula had a decision coming about the terrible development scheme he was proposing, which includes rehabilitating the hospital. Why do people oppose this development scheme? Because it crams ugly, modern townhouses into a historic piece of Missoula’s geography that have NO BUSINESS being there, unless today’s business is destroying EVERYTHING that makes a community worth living in.

The picture above shows my kids at Fort Missoula in the spring of 2020, a year trust in the media started declining precipitously, which is something I learned at the one of the Big Sky Documentary “Doc-Shops”. Gee, I wonder what was happening that spring, does anyone remember?

Taking my kids to play outside was more than an amenity that spring, it was a reminder of WHY people make sacrifices to live in places like Missoula. Here’s a little from the article about how unfair Missoula is being to the poor developer, Max Wolf. From the link:

Mark Stermitz, the lawyer for the developers, said during the hearing the council should have thrown out the original ruling because of Missoula’s historic preservation officer’s assessment of the Fort Missoula core, the role of open space at the site and the question of fairness.

“We didn’t feel that we got a fair shake from the day we applied because of a biased board concern,” Stermitz said, referring to concerns over housing at Fort Missoula from groups like Save The Fort.

Yes, I don’t doubt that people who LOVE the fort absolutely HATED the development scheme the second they saw what was being proposed because building ANY new structures at the density being proposed would radically alter this part of the Fort where people like me go to GET AWAY from the more dense urban parts of our valley.

Here’s a little more about the history that Wolf wanted to impact by shitting out some townhouses:

The hospital was the Missoula epicenter of the Spanish Flu epidemic in 1918 and served Japanese and Italian detainees during World War II.

In 1963, the U.S. Army transferred ownership of the hospital and surrounding grounds to the Women’s Club for $1. The Women’s Club then transferred ownership to Montana Youth Guidance Center to create a rehab facility.

In the 1960s, the center transferred ownership to the Western Montana Mental Health Center. The group used the building for mental health services for a number of years. 

Despite calls to sell the building to the Rocky Mountain Heritage Center, WMMHC put the land on the open market in 2019 for $900,000.

This recent history is interesting to consider when you know our former County Commissioner, Jean Curtiss, was on the board of WMMHC and, in 2019, she was publicly complaining about…DEVELOPMENT that was being enabled by County money. Isn’t that funny?

There’s more I’d like to share, but I’ve got to get moving this morning after a nice chat with local police. Apparently my grocery cart is causing some concern at City Hall, where I parked it conspicuously outside after City Attorney, Ryan Sudbury, told me he didn’t read my blog.

By leaving the cart covered with a large magnetic banner I had made asking WHAT HAPPENED TO SEAN STEVENSON? I was testing a theory that this banner would act as an invisibility cloak, effectively hiding my cart, but I guess the image of a euthanized black man smiling next to an attractive celebrity isn’t the invisibility cloud I thought it would be.

I’ll have more to say about yesterday’s decision, and it will probably rhyme, so stay tuned.

And, as always, thanks for reading!