by Travis Mateer
I took this picture of a pretty amazing sign as the sun worked to crest the mountains behind Stockman’s bank. Why is this sign amazing? It’s amazing because this is the FIRST TIME a physical FOR SALE sign has graced the intersection of Front and Orange, so obviously an entire news article should probably be written about, right Skiggy?
This week, Sterling Commercial Real Estate Advisors of Missoula finally put big signs on the lots downtown at the intersection of Front Street and Orange Street near the Clark Fork River.
The city of Missoula owns the parcel with the uncovered asphalt parking lot closest to Orange Street south of Front, but the three surrounding parcels including one along the river are privately owned by Riverfront Triangle Partners LLC of Missoula.
“It’s been for sale for four years, we never had a sign on it though,” explained Matt Mellot, managing partner and commercial real estate adviser at Sterling. “We had it under contract three different times.”
With this exciting news hitting our exciting town where the show Yellowstone was filming last night, I couldn’t help satisfying my curiosity about the players going more public about their excitement that some day this land will sell, like the former library, and the former Sleepy Inn.
Before getting to the farm team, I took this somewhat blurry picture last night after seeing all the ACTION from the Yellowstone filming near Grizzly Grocery. I’ve written about this particular Yellowstone filming location before, but I hadn’t seen it active. There were several uniformed Missoula police officers standing around moonlighting, and I even heard someone yell CUT! Hopefully no trees changed the visuals for our Hollywood pals, like Taylor, who enjoys purchasing historic ranches when he isn’t creating horsey porn.
Getting back to the farm team, I Googled Matt Mellot’s name and found that his development company is ALSO involved in the proposed project west of town, at the Wye. This “massive” project could even have its own farm. Is having a farm some kind of new trendy amenity? From the link:
A standalone community with its own farm and potentially hundreds of homes at the Wye west of Missoula was initially approved by county officials this week.
The Missoula Consolidated Planning Board unanimously approved the Grass Valley Gardens subdivision on Tuesday, and the Missoula County Commissioners will consider the project on August 8. The subdivision includes the first four phases of a larger development and includes 445 residential units and seven commercial lots.
“I hope this really builds out and becomes what it’s proposed to become because we’ve been very vocal about wanting mixed-use development,” said Rick Hall, a planning board member. “I think it’s a great plan.”
Is Tax Increment schemes a part of this “plan”? Of course! But if you even START to think critical thoughts, our local officials are ready to FARM ’em away (emphasis mine):
In 2020 and 2023, Missoula County implemented two targeted economic development districts around the Wye to allow the collection of tax increment revenue to help pay for needed roads, water, sewer and stormwater infrastructure. As improvements are made in the district and property taxes go up, the difference in tax revenue is collected in a fund for further investment in the district.
The planning commissioners were supportive of the initial project as well as the long-term plan while recognizing the challenges of building in the area.
Dave Loomis praised the project’s mixed-use design but said the county has a lot of filling in to do at the Wye to address transportation needs.
Commission President Sean McCoy, who owns a farm, said if developed, the project’s central farm could produce a lot of food for the area and advocated for establishing the agricultural piece of the project sooner rather than later.
Wait, this farm team has SEAN MCCOY on it? Hilarious! This is the guy who I reported on 8 WHOLE MONTHS before local media got around to realizing McCoy had a checkered past that he wasn’t being forthcoming about. So glad he has a farm and a government position to help this “massive” development.
When we talk about the County farm team, we can’t forget another farmer, County Commissioner Josh Slotnick, and his funny farm fumbles with Corner Farm. Don’t worry, City Councilor, Bob Campbell, is on the case! If Bob’s investigative skills as a former cop are anything like Detective Guy Baker’s, I’m confident Josh and the rest of the farm team have NOTHING to worry about.
No one tied to government money yanked from your wallet should be worrying too much right now because, with so many trees down from the storm, and with the fire risk still prevalent, who wants to light the torches and pick up the pitchforks?
Thanks to passive citizens who just keep taking it, no one in local government is going to balk at taking more money for the many “needs” of our growing community, like a NEW BOOKMOBILE for the trillion dollar library. Remember how just a few weeks ago it was reported that the library spent $365,000 on a climbable DNA structure that’s not safe to climb?
Did I want to create a bookmobile for my amazing book collection? Sure, but here’s the thing: fuck me. I made the mistake of trying to raise the alarm about vast corruption in this town, so anything I might want do needs to be dealt with accordingly.
If you want to start understanding the scope of what I’ve been investigating, White Supremacist Story Time is just part I, and I’ve got 4 other parts written and ready to go, but I don’t think ONLINE is the place for my True Crime essay using synchronicities to shift from a WHO DONE IT to a WHO IS GONNA DO IT perspective is the place to put it out, so stay tuned for how to obtain this explosive piece of writing.
If you’d like to support my work, Travis’ Impact Fund (TIF) is the place to do it, and any bit helps.
Thanks for reading!
