Large Project Phased and Concomitant Construction Variance proposed

The size and scope of projects in the remaining large acreages found within the Bozeman city limits has increased dramatically over just the last few years. The scale of the the vertical construction component of any of these projects is projected to be at least half of the city's annual budget, and in some cases well in excess of the city's approximated $110 million annual budget.

This project cost expansion coupled with long standing systematic impediments in both the horizontal construction resources and Bozeman's Development processes has created a less-than competitive development environment in Bozeman, when compared to other similarly sized towns in the western US. This disparity was brought to light by developers interested in South University District in Bozeman. The interested developers indicated that they were able to achieve permitting in 8-10 months and construction completion in 14-16 months in other regionally competitive, demographically similar towns. In Bozeman, that same timeline was 42-48 months. Begging the question, "Why would any competitive business invest $50-$100M+ in a town that took twice as long as the regional average to begin producing competitive returns?".

Based on this finding, the BDC and our colleagues at Stahly Engineering, on behalf of RTR Holdings II, set about trying to cut 12 to 16 months out of Bozeman's resource usage and development processes.

Our resultant collaboration accomplished the desired objective by combining concomitant construction of various infrastructure components with phased deployment of infrastructure, and a change in the way street ROWs are addressed--the end result is that we shortened the development timeline by 12- 16 months, making Bozeman a more regionally competitive development environment. These modifications were proposed as a variance for the South University District Final Plat.

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