What the Library's Exit Leaves on the Kalispell Center Mall's Northwest Corner

"The question in front of you this afternoon is not whether we want the street," Kalispell Chamber of Commerce CEO Lorraine Clarno told the city's Urban Renewal Agency on Oct. 15, according to the Flathead Beacon. "It's how do we pay for it and whether we take the opportunity that avails us today and is in front of us, or wait for potentially another decade, who knows."

The agency voted unanimously to send the mall's funding request on to City Council. One week later, the Flathead County Library's trustees dropped out of the deal that was supposed to give the redevelopment its most public tenant.

For a year and a half, the Kalispell branch and the Kalispell Center Mall had been planned as each other's answer. The library got a walkable downtown site. The mall got a reason for people to show up on a Tuesday afternoon. Now each one has to solve its own problem, and their deadlines land within a year of each other.

Two Acres Needed, 1.4 Available

The library board decided on Oct. 22 to end negotiations with SHOP Companies over a 2-acre lot on the mall's northwest corner, next to Fifth Avenue West. The Daily Inter Lake reported that trustees had been looking at that corner since 2025. Library officials first discussed putting a branch into the redevelopment with the firm in February 2025, about seven months after SHOP bought the mall in July 2024.

The deal came down to measurements. Once two easements on the property were measured precisely, the buildable area shrank to 1.4 acres. Trustee Jane Wheeler, who sits on the library's Facilities Committee, told the paper the branch needs at least 2 acres for a 40,000-square-foot building plus its loading dock, parking lot and book return bin.

This was the second time the mall had come up as a library site. In 2023, trustees briefly looked at turning part of the empty Herberger's store into a library. That building is now slated for demolition.

The Corner Was Drawn Around a Library

The site plan was laid out with the library in it. In the version SHOP submitted for tax increment financing this spring, the library sat on the northwest corner, with a hotel just to the south and two retail buildings plus an event venue to the east, according to the Daily Inter Lake's May 28 report.

That design breaks the west side of the mall into five separate buildings so storefronts face outward. The developer describes it as turning the mall "inside out." It also cuts leasable space by about 102,000 square feet. That matters because, as of May 2026, only 33% of the mall's 215,000 leasable square feet was occupied. Less space means fewer empty storefronts to fill, and the library would have filled a corner without needing a retail lease.

As recently as Sept. 25, the Hagadone News Network reported that Parkline Partners was "still considering" the library for that corner as part of a rebrand to the Parkline District. The rebrand also includes a new hotel, likely with an attached multi-level parking structure, plus event space and national retail brands. The existing Red Lion Hotel is part of the project as well.

On paper, losing the library actually helps the mall's tax math. The Flathead Beacon reported a total project cost of $127.3 million: $65.3 million up front and an estimated $62 million in later development. If the library had bought its corner, the tax-generating share would have dropped to about $121 million, since the library would be tax-exempt, Hagadone reported. The open corner now counts toward the tax base the TIF request depends on. It just needs a private use.

The First Thing Built Could Be a Street

None of the buildings described above are part of the funding request heading to Council. Parkline Partners is asking for $13.9 million, cut from $16.9 million and before that $23 million. That money covers phase one only, which is mostly public infrastructure. The facade and the interior renovation were moved to phase two.

Most of the money goes to the street, and Clarno's comment explains why. She said the city's Core Area Plan, transportation plan and downtown plan all call for better connections in this area, and some of them specifically name an extended 3rd Avenue West as an alternate route to Main Street and Highway 93. Representatives of the Kalispell Downtown Business Improvement District and the Northwest Montana Association of REALTORS also spoke in favor.

The trailhead connects the project to something that already exists. The paved Parkline Trail runs 1.7 miles east to west on the old Great Northern Railway corridor, from Meridian Street to Woodland Park, and the mall sits right next to it. The city is already thinking about what gets built along it. The Daily Inter Lake reported that the Planning Commission was set to discuss, without voting, proposed standards for landscaping, lighting, pedestrian connections and building orientation for future development along the trail.

KPAX reported after the Urban Renewal Agency vote that the request would reach City Council "at a future date." Neither the Oct. 19 regular meeting agenda nor the Oct. 26 work session agenda listed it. The Oct. 19 agenda set the next regular meeting for Nov. 2. No construction dates have been announced for the demolition or the street.

Two Clocks That Run Out a Year Apart

Neither project has much room to wait for the other. The library branch has to leave its building at 247 First Ave. E. by 2033, and trustees are already looking for another site within walking distance of downtown. In 2023, KPAX reported that Kalispell Public Schools owns that building, that the library leases space in it, and that the building had received an F rating in a security audit and wasn't ADA accessible. That is older reporting about the building's condition, but it explains why staying put was never the plan.

The mall has a timeline of its own:

The current stores are still open in the meantime. JCPenney still lists its store at 20 N Main St. in the mall. Even so, the cost analysis behind the TIF request expects the east side's full interior renovation to disrupt business there before it improves anything.

Columbia Falls shows what it looks like when a library search lands. The same county library board picked the former Glacier Lanes and Casino bowling alley at 307 Nucleus Ave. as a possible new home for the Columbia Falls branch, which now operates inside City Hall. A nonbinding letter of intent offers $817,000 for the property. Columbia Falls City Council, acting as the Urban Renewal District Board, set aside $1 million in tax increment financing for the move. That money must be spent by June 30, 2028.

So in the same week, Columbia Falls is using TIF money to bring a library downtown, while the Kalispell branch is back to looking at sites and Kalispell's TIF request is paying for a street.

Dates on the Downtown Calendar

1. Nov. 2, 2026: Kalispell City Council's next regular meeting. The $13.9 million request wasn't scheduled as of late October, so check the city's agenda center for when it comes up.
2. Dec. 4, 2026: The Holiday Stroll and tree lighting downtown, per a City of Kalispell notice.
3. Dec. 5, 2026: Family activities on day two of the Stroll, including crafts and a downtown scavenger hunt.
4. June 30, 2028: Deadline for spending Columbia Falls' $1 million library relocation TIF funds.
5. 2029: The year the mall project's cash flow is projected to turn positive.
6. 2032: Projected near full occupancy for the redeveloped mall.
7. 2033: The deadline for the Kalispell branch to leave 247 First Ave. E.

Until something moves, the northwest corner of the mall property is 1.4 buildable acres next to Fifth Avenue West, a corner that was drawn for a library and now has no named use.

If you want to talk through what the Parkline District plan, the 3rd Avenue West connection or the library search could mean for your part of town, Tyree Real Estate is glad to sit down with you. Work with Us and Start Your Montana Property Search.