Why the Wye

The Wye is named for the “Y” shaped intersection of Highway 93 and Interstate 90, west of Missoula on the way to Frenchtown. In the last few years, the Wye has been a hotspot of activity, including a new public water system, two targeted economic development districts and the influx of new businesses.

How did this area become primed for growth in the Missoula Valley? Couldn’t a development moratorium help address concerns about affordability and preserving the culture that Missoula is known for? Community and Economic Development Director Andrew Hagemeier joined Josh Slotnick on this episode to answer these questions and more. 

 
Thank you to Missoula's Community Media Resource for podcast recording support!

Transcript

Josh Slotnick: [00:00:10] All right. Welcome back, everybody to the agenda with the Missoula County Commissioners. I'm Josh Slotnick and I'm solo hosting again. I think Dave and Juan are at F1 in Monaco this week. Those two get around. Anyway, today we are welcoming Andrew Hagemeier back to the podcast for his, yes fifth appearance, because Andrew is a busy guy and involved in all kinds of interesting things. We're here talking with Andrew in his capacity as Director of Community and Economic Development about what's going on at the Wye. So I got to just preface all this. I work closely with Andrew. I'm very proud of that. And I'm going to ask questions of Andrew that I already kind of know the answer to, but I think people out there don't. So I'm going to toss these big softballs to start. Andrew.

Andrew Hagemeier: [00:00:53] All right.

Josh Slotnick: [00:00:54] Why was the Wye established as a prime area of growth for all kinds of things way back in 2022.

Andrew Hagemeier: [00:01:00] Well, it was really before.

Josh Slotnick: [00:01:01] Oh my God.

Andrew Hagemeier: [00:01:02] So you don't know? I guess I don't know. I take it back. I take it back. Yeah. You know, it goes back to when we did the the land use element, which is. Yeah. Which now you're like, oh yeah, the land use. Yeah. How can I forget? It's part.

Josh Slotnick: [00:01:13] Of law.

Andrew Hagemeier: [00:01:14] Yeah. Right. So the land use element was a planning process that we undertook. I think we started in maybe 2017. It was a two year public engagement process where we went all over the Missoula Valley, including the Mullan Road area, the target range, East Missoula Bonner. We had open houses in the city of Missoula. Get an idea of how people how they envisioned growth occurring in the Missoula Valley, outside city limits in the county. And we had a lot of maps and online tools where people could place, you know, things in geography. And we asked people, where do you want to see growth happen? Where does it make sense to see growth happen? And where doesn't it. Where, where are there values that we want to protect? And we had received thousands of comments during this period of time. So a really large and successful public engagement process. And when we created the maps that showed circles of where the public had said they thought growth was a good idea, where it made sense. The one spot where there was really a consensus was out at the Wye. There's a lot of good reasons for that. There's obviously it's on, you know, interstate highway system, the federal highway, you know, 93 and 90, the intersection of 93 and 90. There's rail lines, there's major gas lines. There's already development occurring there. There's city sewer goes out to the south side of the interstate and a little bit north. And there's also a public water system that's privately owned on the on the north side of the interstate, but not the south. So we have a lot of the pieces that we need to facilitate growth.

Josh Slotnick: [00:02:45] So up to that point, we really hadn't seen a whole lot of growth out there. There had been change for sure. If you were to look at a satellite photo from 1970 to 1990 to 2000 to 2020. Whenever you would see change. But we hadn't really seen intensive growth. What do you think had held this area back from growing?

Andrew Hagemeier: [00:03:04]  [00:03:04]Yeah, it was this hodgepodge of infrastructure that we had. So like I mentioned, there's a water system on the north side, but the sewer system is mainly on the south side of the interstate. [00:03:15]

Josh Slotnick: [00:03:15]  [00:03:15]And the distance is pretty big. [00:03:16]

Andrew Hagemeier: [00:03:16]  [00:03:16]Yeah. Well, you know. [00:03:17]

Josh Slotnick: [00:03:17]  [00:03:17]And there's an interstate. [00:03:18]

Andrew Hagemeier: [00:03:18]  [00:03:18]Right? I mean, you have to tunnel under that or underneath that. So for development to really occur, it's not an either or thing. It's just an and thing. You need water, sewer and roads. You need all three present. Otherwise you're not developing at any sort of intensity. You're basically there isn't really any scale of efficiency for just sewer or just water. You need all three. [00:03:39]

Josh Slotnick: [00:03:39]  [00:03:39]I think a lot of people who hadn't thought about these sorts of things, but have just lived in Missoula for a long time, or really lived in any highly civilized kind of municipality for a while. Imagine that growth is more of an organic thing. Like, I was here 20 years ago and there were only these stores and houses, and now look at this. It's just grown. And if I understand you right. Actually, it isn't just entirely organic. There is an intentionality piece to this too, that depends on the creation of infrastructure. It's very specific infrastructure. [00:04:04]

Andrew Hagemeier: [00:04:04] Yeah. You know, and I think it can happen either way. It can be organic, it can be unplanned, or it can be planned and it can be strategic. And I think Missoula County, in the not too distant past growth was happening to Missoula County. We weren't being really intentional about where it was. We weren't using infrastructure to guide where we wanted growth to go. You know, one of the things about the why is that it is well suited for growth, but it's also the absence of the things that the values that we also really are concerned about in Missoula County, like really good ag land, really good wildlife habitat. Those aren't so much a concern at the Wye as they would be in Grass Valley and things like that. It's not just the fact that there's good infrastructure there, there's the lack of the other things. But yeah, we used to have this approach where, you know, we would extend sewer because so much growth had happened that the groundwater was starting to get contaminated from the septic systems. That was the reason why we were extending sewer, not because we said, hey, this is where we want growth to happen because we can make it more reactive. Yeah, we were reactive. And part of that 2019 Missoula area land use element, that planning process that involved thousands of comments. We changed in written policy that the trajectory of Missoula County. In that document, we said we're no longer going to be reactive to growth. We're going to be proactive growth, because in order to address these major concerns that we have in our community of things like the housing crisis are shrinking industrial base, we need to get ahead of the curve. We need to get out in front of that. So how you really can do that and be strategic about growth and is you use a couple of different tools. You use infrastructure and you use zoning.

Josh Slotnick: [00:05:43] So for infrastructure, it's one thing to say, well, we want to we want to see development out here, residential, commercial, industrial, retail, etc. it's all we got to do is run sewer, water and road grid. That is so many zeros and commas, right? Way more than we could. We could generate with our modest tax base. So how do we get from saying this is what we want to see. And it costs an ungodly sum of money to actually making it happen. What kind of tools can we bring to this to actually make these things occur?

Andrew Hagemeier: [00:06:09] Yeah. Not many. Yeah. We're pretty limited as a county. The state of Montana really limits how counties can fund infrastructure. They make it pretty difficult. I don't know the whole story behind why, but that's the reality. Probably the best tool we have to do this is the use of these targeted economic development districts. We call them TEDDs. So you might hear that name thrown around. What we do is we draw a geographic area that is infrastructure deficient. It lacks the infrastructure to support development, but that's an area that we want to see some development occur. And what happens is, is as that growth occurs in that area, it starts out pretty slow at first, but hopefully over time it starts ramping up as that growth occurs. Now we're getting wonky into tax policy, but the new tax revenue generated by that new growth is required to be used within that geographic area to support the infrastructure necessary to support growth.

Josh Slotnick: [00:07:03] Yeah, in a sense, there's a diversion of new taxes. But when property values increase or when new property is built inside this circle, the increment, the new money is diverted away from the traditional taxing jurisdictions depending on where it is. It's fire districts, counties, school districts, etc. goes into a fund to do specific projects in that district. In this case, projects around infrastructure.

Andrew Hagemeier: [00:07:27] Yep. And so it's widely known as tax increment financing. Right. The cities can use tax increment financing as well and what's called urban redevelopment area. There's two big differences though that the cities use it for blight. They trying to remove blight where in the counties we use it to build infrastructure which is a great use. Yeah. And because we do not have the same powers to to build infrastructure that cities do. And so but we have the same needs. We're growing. We have a shrinking industrial base and we're in a housing crisis. There's no way we can address these significant problems in our community without infrastructure.

Josh Slotnick: [00:08:03] So how do we know this works? How do we know that reinvesting money within a district actually facilitates growth? Is there any example out on the landscape that we've been involved in where you could point to and be like, look at that growth?

Andrew Hagemeier: [00:08:14] Yeah. I mean, probably the one that people don't recognize but has been wildly successful is the development park. So just north of the airport and Airway Boulevard, where you get off the interchange there, and then you go underneath the railroad tracks at all that industrial land a long time ago was just a farm, a field. And the county actually used tax increment financing to extend sewer water, build those interchanges, build the roads to facilitate that industrial park. And this was done at a time. I mean, it was over 20 years ago, if not 30 years ago, when we started doing this. I mean, well before I was working for the right. And this was in a transition in a different, but sort of similar transitionary period for Missoula, where we were exiting the timber economy, where, you know, we had five mills operating in the Missoula Valley, maybe even more at that time. They had hundreds of jobs at each mill. It was shutting down. And so the county tried a technique that was really popular in economic development circles at that time is we're going to build an industrial park, and we're going to attract companies to move here to Missoula, Montana, to take advantage of this great industrial park. Except it didn't work that way. I mean, it worked. It worked phenomenally well. But what ended up happening was it didn't bring in companies from outside the area. It allowed companies that were already in Missoula to expand. They were constrained for some reason. They didn't have the space, they couldn't find the right location. They didn't have the infrastructure to be able to grow their business. And when Missoula County created that development park, it allowed these businesses to move out there and be bigger and have more jobs become more profitable. So it was wildly successful in the terms that it helped Missoula. And there were other factors as well, but it was one of the things that helped Missoula transfer successfully out of this timber based economy into.

Josh Slotnick: [00:10:15] A more.

Andrew Hagemeier: [00:10:16] Diverse, more diverse economy. That was because of the use of tax increment financing. Now that district has now sunsetted, it is gone. All those jobs, all those people that that have jobs can, you know, you can point back to the use of tax increment financing.

Josh Slotnick: [00:10:30] Yeah, I would say one misunderstanding around tax increment financing is that there's an assumption that the return on the investment is greater tax revenue in the future. And I think that's fine. That's one way to look at it. But it's a pretty myopic way to look at it, and the actual way to look at the return on investment is the level of commerce, employment, general increase in economic activity that happens in these areas that were previously quiet. That's the return on investment. And look at the deep arc or out at the old mill. You were talking about Mills going Bonner, Bonner, hundreds and hundreds of jobs where there were thousands and then none. And it was reborn in a much more diverse way. And it's a real active place right now. So if we go back to the why for a second, we talked, we were talking about infrastructure. There's a pretty great story, the development of a public water system and two major private industries, and the county coming together to get something done on an accelerated timeline, get a public water system done. Do you mind telling that story?

Andrew Hagemeier: [00:11:28] Yeah. So we're going to start with the 2019. Let's go back.

Josh Slotnick: [00:11:31] To.

Andrew Hagemeier: [00:11:31] The land use. That is the root of everything. So in that document, we recognize that there was a need for infrastructure at the Wye, specifically a water system. We also talked about the need for utilizing public private partnerships to try to build it. That was step one. This is all we're talking about. Very strategic, very deliberate steps. Step one land use element land use policy. Step two was then we zoned the why. The way we said we were going to. We wanted to see development occur. So then step three was we created the targeted Economic Development District. There. The. Why one Ted. So a local developer saw the county doing these deliberate strategic, intentional steps. They said, this is an opportunity. They basically knew that an investment in that area was a good idea because it fit along with the community's values, and the county was following through with what they said they were going to do. So Grass Valley Industrial, it came in, purchased a fairly large section of undeveloped land, industrial land in the center of the Wye and wanted to do an industrial subdivision.

Andrew Hagemeier: [00:12:31] But the area there, they have roads, they have sewer, but no water. So there's a constraint. And what that constraint is, you can't build a building over 12,000ft² without having a pressurized fire suppression system, and a pressurized fire suppression system is a very, very difficult, expensive thing to do. So as a result, what we were seeing at the Wye is a lot of buildings that were under 12,000ft². And if you have a building that's under 12,000ft², then you have fewer jobs, right? So they saw the opportunity to come in, utilize this, Ted, the tax increment financing that was available to try to build a water system. But before they came and talked to us, they talked to a Montana knife company, Grass Valley Gardens, went up and talked to Montana Knife Company, who also had just bought property and not wanted to build a 600 zero square foot manufacturing facility and was going to need a water system, too. So the two of them approached the county and said, hey, is there any way we built this water system that you would purchase it from us?

Josh Slotnick: [00:13:32] What would that do for us?

Andrew Hagemeier: [00:13:33] Well, we get a water system. I mean, there you go, there you go. I mean, it's that simple. But what we do, what we're able to do in this situation, is we're able to utilize the best parts of both entities, right? So the best part of the private sector does best with what local government does best. We are able to bring those things together. And we were able to build the water system in about a year, transfer that thing to the county. So in the county now, as of about a week or two ago, owns this water system in a much faster time frame than the county itself could do.

Josh Slotnick: [00:14:03] Sure. So these two industrialists basically came up with the money up front, got this thing built quickly, and then we're buying it back.

Andrew Hagemeier: [00:14:10] We bought it.

Josh Slotnick: [00:14:10] Back. And when we're buying it back, how are we involving tax increment financing in the Ted in the in the purchase of this.

Andrew Hagemeier: [00:14:16] So the tax increment financing in that area, we get revenue every year, which is just tax revenue. So the district gets revenue and then we can apply it to projects. What tax increment financing. Now we're getting pretty wonky here.

Josh Slotnick: [00:14:28] But it's okay.

Andrew Hagemeier: [00:14:28] What tax increment financing really does. Well that other financing tools cannot that the county has available to us is we are able to leverage future tax dollars. So let's say our revenue is in a district of $600,000. We get $600,000 a year annually in tax increment. A bank will look at that and say, oh, your salary is $600,000. I'll loan you $5 million to pay for this water system, because I know you make you have a very consistent, constant salary. So I'm not just going to loan it to you. I'm going to give you a really low interest rate because you are a sure bet to pay it back, right? Like we have collateral, just like when you go to the bank, they want to see what your collateral is. And if you don't have collateral, they charge you a way higher interest rate. Well, we're able to use that tax increment that every year that revenue we get as collateral less wonky or more wonky than. I actually explained that fairly. No, you didn't.

Josh Slotnick: [00:15:23] And you did a great job. And I feel like really focusing on the financing piece of tax increment financing. Yeah. We borrowed against future gains because we have enough money right now to make the payments. And as you were pointing out, these areas are infrastructure deficient, and our goal is to see more development out there. If we put in a water system that is pressurized to the degree you're talking about, we would see future development in a way that we wouldn't see if were not for the existence of that water system.

Andrew Hagemeier: [00:15:49] Something that I didn't put in there, but I need to I need to inject, is that the water system actually costs like 6.2 million and maybe 6.1, and we paid 5.3. So the developers contribute about $800,000 to this water system. So we we got a discount.

Josh Slotnick: [00:16:04] We got a deal, we got a deal. And I think this was a bit of a win win because if they had to pay for it entirely on their own, wouldn't they have paid more than 800,000?

Andrew Hagemeier: [00:16:11] Oh yeah. They would have paid over 6 million. And they could have never they would have never been able to afford that.

Josh Slotnick: [00:16:16] So we got this done. We these two industrialists and the county got a water system done more quickly and less expensively by working together and set the stage for future development.

Andrew Hagemeier: [00:16:26] Yeah. And that's an important part. You know, so Montana Knife opened and I can't remember the number of jobs that they already have in the place, but it's over a hundred, I believe already. So just a ton of new jobs because of the water system and Grass Valley Industrial is now they're selling their lots. They're starting to get businesses move in, but they anticipate around 350,000ft² of industrial space.

Josh Slotnick: [00:16:47] So 350,000ft².

Andrew Hagemeier: [00:16:50] So you're talking about hundreds of jobs there.

Josh Slotnick: [00:16:52] Yeah. I imagine you probably know this. The I don't know the number offhand, but there's a ratio of square feet of space to employees.

Andrew Hagemeier: [00:16:59] Yeah. It's something like one per 1200ft² or something like that. So it's, it wouldn't end up being 350 new jobs, but it would be hundreds of new jobs. It might be just like the D park. They might be other Missoula businesses looking for a place to expand. So it might be it might not all be new jobs, but it's definitely a huge opportunity.

Josh Slotnick: [00:17:20] The legislature in 2025 said that TEDDs and the mechanism of tax increment financing don't have to just address the need for more industry on the ground. They can also take on workforce housing. Can you describe some of that?

Andrew Hagemeier: [00:17:33] Yeah. This came about pretty recently when the when the legislature was really trying to tackle the housing and what they were really trying to do was open up supply. That was the focus of the legislature. Sure. And so they were looking for different opportunities. And one of them was to allow tax increment financing, both in words and in TEDDs, to be able.

Josh Slotnick: [00:17:52] Cities and counties.

Andrew Hagemeier: [00:17:54] To be able to support what's called workforce housing. Now they use the term workforce housing in the statute. They did not define what workforce housing is. So they left it up to the different jurisdictions to define that. Now, in a way that's pretty smart because workforce housing in oh, I don't know, like towns.

Josh Slotnick: [00:18:12] Fallon County.

Andrew Hagemeier: [00:18:13] Fallon County is going to be a lot different than workforce.

Josh Slotnick: [00:18:15] Housing in Gallatin County.

Andrew Hagemeier: [00:18:16] So they left it up to us to identify it. But what that does is it now, the way we're approaching it in Missoula County is we will use tax increment financing to build the infrastructure, water, sewer, roads that is now available to housing before, we just supported industrial uses. If you wanted to do a housing project and you wanted us to expand this, send the sewer, we would say, sorry, we can't use tax increment financing for housing. It has to only be for industry. But now we can use it for housing too. So it's not a direct subsidy to the housing project. This is not.

Josh Slotnick: [00:18:49] Part of it's not vertical construction.

Andrew Hagemeier: [00:18:51] It is not part of their capital stack that they use to build the housing. It levels the playing field and an infrastructure deficient area for sure. We get a road, we get a sewer line, we get a water line. Those are ours. Those are the public's.

Josh Slotnick: [00:19:02] If the if the developer of housing had to cover the entirety of those costs, those costs would then be absorbed in the cost of the actual housing for sale, which makes them ever more expensive and more of a risk for someone to take. Wanting to go build them. Yeah. So on this subject, you said state didn't really carefully define and they left it vague. And you pointed out this was a good thing to do because one size doesn't fit all in a state as economically diverse as ours. Just in rough terms, how did we in Missoula County decide to define what workforce housing was?

Andrew Hagemeier: [00:19:33] So our housing wonk. And that's an actual term in our HR directory, housing wonk John Wilkie developed a policy for us, and.

Josh Slotnick: [00:19:41] He did this in concert with people in the development.

Andrew Hagemeier: [00:19:43] Yeah. Oh yeah. He brought in both developers from both the nonprofit sector. So people that aren't trying to make profit on housing, they're mission driven like.

Josh Slotnick: [00:19:51] Homeward front Step and Housing Authority.

Andrew Hagemeier: [00:19:54] Yeah. And then he also brought in for profit housing developers that do capital, a affordable housing that do actual subsidized housing, but also do market rate housing. So they're familiar. They also are mission driven, but they they're not in the same way as a nonprofit. So we brought them in and he created a policy at first that was really all about requiring permanently affordable housing, which is actually a really complicated bureaucratic thing to do to monitor housing.

Josh Slotnick: [00:20:24] Yeah. And over time.

Andrew Hagemeier: [00:20:25] Yeah. And there are people who excel in it are the front steps. The homework Neighborworks. Neighborworks. Exactly. However, the county does not do that. Yeah. You know, that's what you know, the hope was like we could get a bunch of permanently affordable, what we call big a affordable housing. Well, we took that to everyone and they started running the math and they said, the numbers don't work. Your tax increment financing has to be used for the road. There has to be used for the sewer. It has to be used for the water. That does not help us at all. Not even a drop in the bucket for the capital stack that we need to actually build permanently affordable.

Josh Slotnick: [00:21:03] If we're going to be selling houses that are permanently affordable.

Andrew Hagemeier: [00:21:05] Yeah. It doesn't even get close. The math does not work. So what they came back and they said was, are there ways we can facilitate more naturally occurring workforce housing?

Josh Slotnick: [00:21:17] And we were talking two different categories here workforce housing and capital, a permanently affordable right.

Andrew Hagemeier: [00:21:23] So the idea that they came up with was require developers that want to use tax increment financing for their infrastructure, requiring them to build more housing than the minimum zoning allowances. So more like if it's 11 units per acre, make them do 15 units per acre.

Josh Slotnick: [00:21:38] And by definition, they're going to be a bit smaller, right? Well, and the lots are going to be smaller and smaller. Lots will keep costs down.

Andrew Hagemeier: [00:21:45] More units, more volume. The other thing they said was focus on unit size. Smaller units are naturally over time.

Josh Slotnick: [00:21:53] They're never going to be as expensive. Right. But but how about well, it could be a small unit with vaulted ceilings and mahogany trim.

Andrew Hagemeier: [00:22:01] So we do get to ask the developer about the finishing the finishes. And so they do have to supply modest finishings mahogany. Yeah exactly. And also by definition these are infrastructure deficient areas. These are not riverfront in downtown Missoula right. This is the Wye you know you're building at 15 units, 20 units per acre. You're building small units. Yeah. It's based off of unit. There's a ratio between bedroom and the size of the unit and the number of bedrooms. And you're not building luxury housing. Absolutely not. And the reality in Missoula, if you run the math on what is workforce housing, there are people that have really good jobs in Missoula that struggle to afford to purchase a home, right?

Josh Slotnick: [00:22:43] I mean, oh my gosh, it's the it's the malady of our time.

Andrew Hagemeier: [00:22:46] We moved away from looking at like talking about income and the ratio that am I that area median income and things like that, and focused on density and focused on unit size and focused on on.

Josh Slotnick: [00:22:57] Bedroom size and finishes. I really like this because it lasts over time.

Andrew Hagemeier: [00:23:01] It's permanent.

Josh Slotnick: [00:23:02] Forever. It's permanent. And, and we're not asking anybody to get into the income monitoring business who doesn't already. Yeah. So I want to shift gears just a little bit. This is super interesting stuff. And I feel like this segues really neatly. We're talking about as you, as you just mentioned, lots of units per acre, lots of production, housing industry on the ground, real change happening. You and I both lived here. You. I think your whole life. Me almost my whole life. People really, really love Missoula deeply. More. More so than many places. And we have a very specific character and feel. Does this kind of building threaten some of what makes us special? And I would go farther and say, what makes us special is what makes us economically prosperous. People no longer come here for a job at the mill. They come here because they want to be here, and they want to be here because this place feels a certain way. What's going on in your head as someone who's really facilitating further development? How do we develop more, put more housing, more jobs on the ground, which would help lower costs and give people the opportunity for a mechanism to stay here and not actually damage the character that they came here for in the first place?

Andrew Hagemeier: [00:24:06] We're high amenity community.

Josh Slotnick: [00:24:08] Absolutely.

Andrew Hagemeier: [00:24:08] So, and I'm talking when I'm talking about amenities, we've got a lot of great urban type amenities that are like, you know, that we we built. But what I'm really focused on in terms of amenities is the type you can't build the natural amenities. Right now. We have chosen that that was a choice that we as a community made. We chose to preserve the National Recreation Area that Missoula lobbied Congress.

Josh Slotnick: [00:24:30] We're looking at beautiful, protected open space right from this room.

Andrew Hagemeier: [00:24:33] Mount jumbo, right. We it's green and wonderful today. There's no elk there. Up, up high now. Yeah. We chose to clean up the Clark Fork River and remove the. Damn right. We did make choices to highlight our natural amenities. And what that does is the communities in the West that that have these really high level natural amenities, they experience this migration to the people want to live there. Yeah. Right. So we've got that. And I kind of look at it as like a Venn diagram that doesn't quite work. We want to have high amenities, high quality of life. We want to have exclusivity. We don't want to grow like, right. And then we want to be affordable. And those three circles do not overlap. Yeah, you can have two of them, but you can't have three. And so long winded. No, no explanation to get there. Is that Missoula? Just like we've chosen to have these really high quality natural amenities is also very much chosen to be an inclusive place.

Josh Slotnick: [00:25:29] Well said Andrew. That's I mean, I think what's tossed out as an option, a different path than the one we're talking about is, well, we just won't do this development. In fact, maybe we'll put some moratoriums or we'll do greenbelts or we'll just we're going to do what we can to keep things as they are. Now, I know of one place in California. I didn't live there. For anybody who's already mad at me, I'm not from California, a little town called Bolinas. You know Bolinas, gorgeous like seaside, quaint, beautiful little craftsman houses like you're there and you're like, this is so nice. Very intentionally. People who had other types of jobs said, we're going to keep it just like it is, which means what is there now becomes a very scarce commodity. And in the world of supply and demand, you just completely turned off the supply tap. The demand will only grow and the cost for those places skyrockets. [00:26:15] So if we were to say, okay, we're just going to keep Missoula the cool, funky, awesome, wonderful place that it is right now. A stone's throw from beautiful public land and water available to all. But we're not building any more of these giant subdivisions. We're not doing any massive multifamily, no more industry. What we would see in short order is prices skyrocket, and the people who are here are not the people who could be here even now. Our choice, I personally believe, is to do development and put more housing, more jobs on the ground and lean into design. We can design things in such a way to maintain character. We can continue that. Amenities like access to public land, water, bike paths, parks, etc. are available for everyone. The design is the midpoint between the binary of builder don't build. [00:27:01]

Andrew Hagemeier: [00:27:01]  [00:27:01]Yeah, yeah. We keep investing in those natural amenities. Keep cleaning up the river, keep whatever it is that we need created. Yeah, yeah. But we also need to build neighborhoods, not housing, right? Not necessarily subdivisions. The focus should be on building neighborhoods. [00:27:15]

Josh Slotnick: [00:27:15] So great word there. And I know you were part of the key part of the land use element and the zoning. And I'm thinking about in the build grant area, not just at the Wye, where the creation of neighborhood was really important. That doesn't happen organically in a market driven world. So what sort of things could we do on the ground? So we end up with neighborhoods, not just bedroom communities.

Andrew Hagemeier: [00:27:35] Yeah. So back to the infrastructure is always important. Having integrated street networks and not cul de sacs and isolated subdivisions, but it also gets into the zoning and facilitating a mix of building types. So our housing types within a development. So you're not building all one type of housing because then you're really just building a type of housing for just a certain right stage of life. So you're really, you're not getting mixed incomes, not getting diversity that, that the successful, like if you think around the area around Orange Street food farm, just imagine that in your head right now, there's shops, businesses, there's big houses, little houses, there's apartment buildings or duplexes. There's all of that is mixed within blocks. Right. And personally, that's, I think, the most vibrant, interesting, desirable neighborhood, that area from, you know, the hip strip area, the Orange Street area in Missoula. Right. And so having your zoning set up so it can mimic that over time.

Josh Slotnick: [00:28:30] So that wherever you can build a single family house, you could build a fourplex and you could build a small shop.

Andrew Hagemeier: [00:28:35] Yeah. Duplex.

Josh Slotnick: [00:28:37] So I mean a retail shop.

Andrew Hagemeier: [00:28:38] Yeah. No, our, our zoning allows smaller scale commercial, not like a Walmart, but like a corner store by. Right. So no special process to, to go in and do a rattlesnake gardens. Right. Or Freddy's Feed and Read.

Josh Slotnick: [00:28:52] And I love that old reference. Way to go. Yeah. So I'm really psyched about this because this is what we can do. We heard this. I know you've heard this too. In interacting with folks in East Missoula when we were doing the land use element. Then later when talking zoning, people said, we want like a Worden's-scale grocery, make that happen. We can't tell any landowner "Carey, thou shalt build a Worden's-style grocery store." But we can do is make it possible via zoning. And then when the market conditions are right, Carey will make that decision, and she'll borrow the money and build her grocery store.

Andrew Hagemeier: [00:29:24] So in the why is actually pretty well suited for that, because the distance from services is maybe greater than Missoula really. East Missoula is just right around the corner to Albertson's, right? It's right there, but there isn't a grocery store at the Wye. And so I think as we see developers come in with the right plans and build the housing with thinking about neighborhood, with the focus being on neighborhood, we're going to start to see some of that neighborhood scale commercial that people are looking for. We're going to see that area develop into a more cohesive neighborhood over time.

Josh Slotnick: [00:29:54] I totally agree the distance from services means it has to become its own set of services, which really means over the next 50 years, its own little town.

Andrew Hagemeier: [00:30:02] Yeah, it's going to resemble that. Yeah.

Josh Slotnick: [00:30:03] Which is great. I just love the idea that somebody's address is going to be WYE comma Montana.

Andrew Hagemeier: [00:30:08] Yeah, it's a.

Josh Slotnick: [00:30:09] Great town.

Andrew Hagemeier: [00:30:10] Name.

Josh Slotnick: [00:30:11] It's awesome. Yeah. Okay. So when thinking about the why economic development, TEDDs, TIFFs the how do we save our skin without selling our soul? What did I miss in asking you that you would like people to know about?

Andrew Hagemeier: [00:30:22] Oh. Great question. [00:30:23] I mean, I think back to the selling the soul idea and the development moratorium idea that, you know, every now and then you might hear about that. [00:30:31]

Josh Slotnick: [00:30:32]  [00:30:32]You hear about it often. [00:30:32]

Andrew Hagemeier: [00:30:32]  [00:30:32]Yeah. I mean, it's not just the we can't because of the negative impacts. Like Missoula would lose its soul quick. Yeah, way more quickly if we if we put up a development moratorium. But it's also constitutionally not possible. Really? Yeah. You have the right. It's layered in multiple aspects of the Constitution, the Fifth Amendment, the 14th amendment. It's all in there that you have the right to travel. What that means is you have the right to live where you want to live. So the only way you can put up development moratoriums is if there is a really, really big public health and safety issue. [00:31:04]

Josh Slotnick: [00:31:04]  [00:31:04]There's not enough water or the groundwater is so high, we're going to pollute groundwater. If we. [00:31:08]

Andrew Hagemeier: [00:31:08]  [00:31:08]West Yellowstone had a development moratorium because their sewer plant was done. They could not put another connection on it, so they had to put a development moratorium on it until they were able to address that problem. And that was not a good time for the people of West Yellowstone. [00:31:25] And it also can't be a permanent thing. You have to try to fix it. So if we were to have some sort of development moratorium, there would be something catastrophically wrong and we could not. It just is not really feasible to do that in Missoula County and not violate the Constitution. Yeah. So that's an important aspect is that it's just constitutionally not possible. Along with we would lose our soul faster that way than if we if we actually tried to keep the, the folks, the artists, the creatives here that don't live in $1 million home.

Josh Slotnick: [00:31:56] But actually do create the culture that people come here for. It's a really interesting, ironic twist to the whole package. Yeah.

Andrew Hagemeier: [00:32:04] Yeah.

Josh Slotnick: [00:32:04] So okay, so we've arrived at our last question. One of my favorite questions. Any idea little nugget of culture you've run across in the past couple of weeks you feel like you want to talk about. So something you heard on a podcast, a song, a book, anything you stumbled into, you thought that was worth it?

Andrew Hagemeier: [00:32:18] Well, I mean, I kind of a little along the lines of our work. So I was recently went to the American Planning Association conference in Detroit, Michigan, and Detroit. Michigan is actually doing pretty well, like the downtown. I was surprised it.

Josh Slotnick: [00:32:32] Was bouncing back from industrial apocalypse 40 years ago.

Andrew Hagemeier: [00:32:35] Yeah, it was a it was a good time. And I went to a lot of sessions at. This conference is really well suited to what I do with the community and economic development. But there were a lot of sessions about what communities were trying to do to address housing, what they were trying to do to address their growth needs. And one of the things that I've learned is that financing infrastructure across this country right now is very, very, very difficult.

Josh Slotnick: [00:32:56] I've heard that.

Andrew Hagemeier: [00:32:57] And it's not just a Missoula problem that that this is universally occurring in communities, which is exasperating our housing crisis and the communities that are doing the most to try to address these things, are taking advantage of the tools that we are doing here that are taking advantage of tax increment financing. They're working with developers to help finance things. They're looking towards different types of housing assistance than just the tax credit. Lai Teck Housing, they're looking towards shared equity models.

Josh Slotnick: [00:33:29] Yeah, we want one in Missoula.

Andrew Hagemeier: [00:33:31] Yeah, we are right there with the things that we're doing in Missoula County are are right out there at the leading edge in this country right now with how we're trying to address the problems that we have.

Josh Slotnick: [00:33:42] And I know why it's because we have people like you, Andrew, and Carey and Allison and Tenzin and a whole bunch of other people.

Andrew Hagemeier: [00:33:49] Well, and we have a political well in Missoula, too. It's our public also.

Josh Slotnick: [00:33:54] Has that expectation.

Andrew Hagemeier: [00:33:55] They want they want solutions. Yeah. Right. Yeah, yeah.

Josh Slotnick: [00:33:59] So Andrew, thank you for everything you do, everything you bring to your work every day. We're really lucky to have you.

Andrew Hagemeier: [00:34:03] I appreciate it.

Josh Slotnick: [00:34:04] And thank you all for listening. Thanks for listening to the agenda. If you enjoy these conversations, it would mean a lot if you would rate and review the show on whichever podcast app you use.

Juanita Vero: [00:34:16] And if you know a friend who would like to keep up with what's happening in local government, be sure to recommend this podcast to them.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:34:21] The agenda with the Missoula County Commissioners is made possible with support from Missoula Community Access Television, better known as MCAT, and our staff in the Missoula County Communications Division.

Josh Slotnick: [00:34:33] If you have a question or a topic you'd like us to discuss on a future episode, email it to Communications@missoulacounty.us.

Juanita Vero: [00:34:41] To find out other ways to stay up to date with what's happening in Missoula County, go to missoula.com/updates.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:34:49] Thanks for listening.