By Josh Margolis
HAVRE, Mont. (NMB) – Local residents packed Havre City Hall on Tuesday night for the presentation of a draft master plan for revitalizing downtown Havre.
High Plains Architects President Randy Hafer guided the proceedings, sharing their vision for downtown Havre.
Hafer shared grand visions of potential steps that can be taken to make downtown more inviting and safer for pedestrians. This included improving wayfinding, adding more greenery and a small playground to Town Square Park, revitalizing historic buildings, expanding recreation opportunities along the Milk River, and turning 1st Street downtown into a two lane road with a median, two turn lanes, and bulb outs.
The vision statement for the plan is to create ‘a vibrant, thriving downtown highlighting Havre’s rich history and community at its core.’
“Really, all the pieces are here. Everything I’m saying, if it sounds too critical, don’t worry about that. Because it’s not about being critical. It’s about helping you understand what needs to be fixed. All the pieces are here,” said Hafer, adding that the breadth of downtown in Havre is a rarity in Montana that can be a major asset.
“With just a few tweaks and other things, this could be a really dynamic downtown,” said Hafer.
Many members of the audience positively received the meeting.
“From a pedestrian standpoint, having a small family liking to walk around downtown, I would like to have at least the bulb outs and some sense of community,” said Havre Trails President Lindsey Brandt-Bennett
However, some expressed concerns about these changes hampering the ability for oversized vehicles to travel on 1st Street, and whether revitalization of downtown would even matter for passersby.
“Before you get to the area you have all these vacant and torn buildings that are dilapidated. You start from the west, 3rd Avenue, and as you go east it gradually gets worse. And that’s what people are going to remember. They’re not going to remember your downtown plan. They’re going to remember your streets and your vacant buildings over there,” said one meeting attendee.
Hafer said the area outside of downtown is outside their project scope and would also be much harder to deal with because of zoning.
“Frankly, that’s kind of 1962 zoning out there. The building in the lot with a parking lot around it. Those, frankly, are a lot harder. And so again, what we were hired to do is look at downtown. So that’s what our focus is and this whole street thing that we’ve been talking about with the downtown district. Should it extend further? Perhaps. Are there things that can be done with some of those other buildings? Perhaps. But that just hasn’t been what our scope is about.”
Another question raised at the meeting was regarding the proposal to turn up to 120,000 square feet of unused second stories downtown into housing, and whether they’d be able to ensure handicap accessibility.
“The building code, if you’re renovating a historic building, which these all are, and you’re not doing … more than 20 units … they don’t have to be accessible. Now, do I think nothing should be accessible? That’s not what I’m saying. But I’m saying is that these buildings weren’t built to be accessible, and especially smaller buildings, to make them accessible, you kill it,” said Hafer in response to a question from Kati Purkett. “And the code doesn’t require it. Because there’s just no way. You can’t put elevators in all these buildings. It just doesn’t work. They take up too much room, they’re too expensive, blah blah blah. So it’s not that I’m opposed to accessible housing, it’s just that this isn’t the place to do it.”
For some of these ideas to become reality, Hafer recommended making sweeping changes to downtown zoning codes.
“Almost nothing downtown is compliant with that zoning. Here’s the deal. The zoning ordinance in the city of Havre was written in 1962. And I can tell you that everybody’s zoning in the whole country was written at about the same time. It was uniformly horrible. And you’re lucky, frankly, because cities that have grown up around that zoning, what are they? Sprawl-ville. That’s what the zoning was about. It’s all about cars. It’s all about driving highways through town. Now cities are taking those highways out because they destroyed communities. Now, you’re not big enough where that’s been a problem, but you do have it on a smaller scale with this highway. It needs to be a street. It was a street before it was a highway and it needs to be a street again. But the zoning downtown is really odd. There’s some things about setbacks. There are no setbacks downtown. It’s zero lot line… Why would you start setting stuff back. And there is some minimum lot widths of 60′? All the lots are 30′. That doesn’t make sense.”
Hafer said the plan is “essentially finished,” but could be tweaked based on the final public comments. He says the report is 95 pages and will be released in the coming weeks.
Once the draft is finalized, it will be up to the City Council whether to adopt it. Funding for some of these goals could come from a variety of sources such as grants or the creation of a business improvement district.
Additional feedback can be sent to downtownhavre@gmail.com by August 23rd.
The PowerPoint from Tuesday’s presentation is expected to be made available soon on the project website.
