About the Park

The Missoula Development Park is a 446-acre area Missoula County developed between 1991 and 2017 for industrial use. Located just west of Missoula between Interstate 90 and the Missoula Airport, the City of Missoula annexed it in 2018.The common areas have remained in County ownership since annexation, with maintenance responsibilities falling to the Property Owners Association (see the Property Owners Association Covenants, Conditions and Restrictions under the “Documents” section).

The POA no longer has enough dues-paying members or board leadership needed to properly maintain the common areas. This has led to the common areas, including parklands, sidewalks, trails and stormwater facilities, falling into disrepair.

Rather than exercise its ability to put a lien on the properties within the Development Park (see the Property Owners Association Covenants, Conditions and Restrictions under the “documents” section) to pay for deferred, cyclical and long-term maintenance, the County proposed to:

• Address deferred maintenance to the stormwater system by ‘un-parking’ and sell common area parklands 4, 6, and 8 for private development. These parks were up for sale, and offers could be made to Flanna McLarty until 5 p.m. Wednesday, May 15, 2024.
• Transfer ownership and maintenance responsibility of the common area stormwater parklands 3, 5, 7, 9A, 11 and 12 to the City of Missoula.
• Transfer ownership and maintenance responsibilities of common areas Airway Boulevard, Expressway Boulevard and Butler Creek to the City of Missoula.
• Transfer ownership and maintenance responsibilities of common areas Redfern 2 and Canyon Creek Park parcels to third parties, preferably to the adjacent Canyon Creek Home Owners Association or AT&T.

For this project to be completed, a majority of the voting members of the Missoula Development Park Property Owners Association needed to agree that the transfer of common area was allowable. After a vote to "allow Missoula County to transfer common areas in the Missoula development park to third parties," where all voting interests were mailed a physical ballot using addresses on record with the State of Montana Department of Revenue, of the 81 ballots returned, 72 voted "FOR" the transfer of property by Missoula County (89%), and nine voted "AGAINST" the transfer of property by Missoula County (11%).

Therefore, Missoula County intends to proceed to transfer common areas in the development park to private individuals and/or entities. The first to be addressed will be Parks 4,6, 8, Redfern 2 and Canyon Creek Park.