At issue is the city’s Downtown Safety and Mobility (DowntownSAM) project. It consists of three separate endeavors: a plan to convert Front and Main streets to two-way traffic, the plan to redevelop Caras Park and a plan to redesign a portion of Higgins Avenue with different traffic configurations.

“This planning effort needs to better engage the downtown business community in a meaningful, rather than superficial, way,” the letter reads. “We also need to have greater involvement from our elected representatives. We, as a group, are weary of how the City and (the Missoula Redevelopment Agency) continue to divide downtown businesses into small groups and present carefully tailored and sometimes inconsistent information.

“Additionally, we are concerned that the MRA and the City, in our view, are allowing the parking and traffic plans to be influenced by climate-change political ideology rather than effective transportation and parking planning,” the letter continues. “Lastly, we believe this process needs greater transparency to ALL businesses, not select focus groups in which handpicked participants are presented carefully crafted messages regarding urban planning concepts that may, or may not, be suitable for downtown Missoula.”

The letter was forwarded to the Missoulian as well as Hess. On Thursday, Hess told the Missoulian he is planning on communicating with the business owners.

“We are coming to the table in good faith and we are very interested in feedback,” Hess said of city administration. “We’re very interested in collaboration and very interested in ensuring this project works for the downtown constituencies. The majority of feedback we’ve gotten has been positive, but we’ll continue to work with people who have questions and concerns.”

The business owners had previously written to Hess on March 6 expressing concerns and asking for a detailed presentation to explain the combined impact of the three plans.

“The signatories of this letter are concerned that the Three Plans, when considered together, will have a profound impact on the availability of downtown parking and will create potential traffic flow issues resulting from the elimination of vehicular lanes on Front Street and Higgins Avenue,” the first letter states. “Further, we do not believe that the urban planning concepts associated with the Three Plans adequately consider the unique characteristics and behavior patterns of greater Missoula, the lack of people currently living downtown and the Montana climate conditions that exist for six to eight months of the year.”

The group said they feel that the city “continues to over-emphasize bicycle and pedestrian movement and is discounting the importance of vehicular traffic and associated parking.”

“Our businesses have made considerable investments to improve our properties, and we pay significant property taxes that are essential to funding the community,” the letter reads. “It is businesses that drive the vitality and overall economic health of the downtown area.”

Hess acknowledged that the city could have done a better job of communicating the plan, but added many business owners have asked for and received small-group meetings on the issue.

“First and foremost, this is a safety project,” Hess said of the Downtown Safety and Mobility project. “You have a crash rate downtown that is seven times higher than the city average and that’s unacceptable. The reason for that is we have old infrastructure that we haven’t invested in. It’s a postwar design that doesn’t meet modern design standards.”

The business and property owners contend that the parking situation downtown (particularly on Front and Main Streets) is “already dire” and has been made substantially worse by the addition of the three new hotels.

While most of the businesses supported the hotels and acknowledge they bring extra customers downtown, they said the 350 new hotel rooms didn’t include any meaningful new parking spots.

They want the city to pause the planning effort of all three plans. Although they said they didn’t have enough information to say whether they fully favor or oppose the three plans, they requested that the city’s planning team hold a big presentation with the downtown business community to address the parking loss and the impact of traffic lane adjustments. The Wilma Theater was made available free of charge for the event.

On March 14, Hess responded via email. Before becoming mayor and while serving on City Council, Hess was the director of the Associated Students at the University of Montana’s Office of Transportation and has long advocated for safe transit and multiple modes of transportation.

“Thank you for your letter and for your interest in the Downtown Safety and Mobility (DowntownSAM) project,” Hess wrote. “I understand that you and others in the business community have a direct interest in how we make transportation investments in our downtown core. I can assure you that the City intends to continue engaging and partnering with the downtown community as these projects move forward. I can also assure you that I have a personal interest in our downtown remaining a vibrant place to live, work and play.”

Hess continued that the city cannot “pause” the project but that it is waiting to hear back on a federal grant application. However, he said, there is still a considerable amount of flexibility in the final designs and a lot of opportunity to find common ground over the next few months.

“We understand and share your concerns about parking and traffic flow in downtown,” Hess said. “The three combined projects are the result of many of years of planning, dating back to the 2008 Downtown Master Plan, which provides a thoughtful framework for public investments that support downtown health and economic success. Recent new federal grant programs provide an unprecedented opportunity to make those public investments.”

Hess said he would “establish small group meetings with businesses to provide information” and noted that the city will host a “town-hall style” meeting sometime in late April or May to bring all of this work together in a cohesive way. Hess noted that he discussed the issue at a City Club meeting and invited people to come to his Wednesdays with the Mayor public form on March 22 to discuss the topic.

“We know we are all at our best when we work together,” Hess said. “Federal funding is a tremendous opportunity to build on and enhance the significant private sector investment we’ve seen, and expect to see, in downtown. We know the DowntownSAM application did not fully meet this value of collaboration, and we will endeavor to do better in the future. Look for more communication in the next several weeks as staff pulls together the information necessary to have a fully engaged conversation.”

In the March 29 letter, the business and property owners said they were disappointed with the response.

“Instead of responding to the request for details of the Combined Plans, the City and MRA have opted to conduct small-group ‘listening sessions’ to better ‘understand’ our concerns,” they wrote. “The downtown business community views the meetings proposed by the MRA as unnecessary and likely unproductive.”

They cited four specific concerns:

First, they want to know the specific number of downtown street parking stalls that will be eliminated and want detailed studies and site plans. They noted that some of them have heard they can expect 20-25% of all street parking on Front, Main and Higgins to be eliminated but they’ve been unable to verify that fact.

Second, they want to know the traffic impact of eliminating vehicle lanes on both Front Street and Higgins Avenue. They’d like to see formal traffic studies that demonstrate this will not have a negative impact on traffic or their customers’ ability to effectively reach their businesses.

Third, they want to see all the bike lanes that will be added and their proximity to other existing bike lanes. 

“Further, we would like to see specific studies that show that the current volume of bicycle traffic downtown justifies this investment and, consequently, justifies the elimination of vehicle lanes and street parking,” the letter states.

Finally, they want to see case studies that show that like-sized communities in cold weather climates benefit from these types of pedestrian and bicycle-centric urban planning changes. They feel the proposed changes do not adequately consider the climate of Montana.

Hess on Thursday said he’s working on a formal response to all the concerns but addressed a few items with the Missoulian.

First, he explained that the loss of parking spots may be temporary. Many on-street parking spots don’t meet ADA standards and have to be removed anyway, he said, and the city is working toward building more parking structures. He hinted that things are progressing in general behind the scenes with getting something built at the Riverfront Triangle.

“You can’t just say in isolation that we’re going to lose some parking through the SAM project,” he explained. “We will gain it back in other ways through other projects.”

Hess also said he does not have a specific case study to show that a redesign similar to SAM has worked in a similar-sized cold-weather city.

“But there is significant research (to show that similar transportation planning has been beneficial in other places),” he said.

The signatories wrote they they are confused why the Missoula Redevelopment Agency is managing these projects, because much of the impacted areas are not in Urban Renewal Districts.

“The business owners feel that the City, and our elected representatives, not the MRA, need to be more engaged in this process,” they wrote. “While there are good people at the MRA, it is an unelected board, with unelected officers that are not accountable to the business constituency.”

They again requested a big town hall meeting that’s open to the public to address their concerns. They also want a pause on planning efforts and asked that the Montana Department of Transportation pause the application process for the federal grant.

“We again request that the City and MRA stop conducting small-group meetings in which attendees are handpicked, presented carefully crafted messages and the ‘findings’ are ‘synthesized’ by a City and MRA that appear committed only to the existing approach,” the letter concluded.

To see the full letter and a list of signatories, visit this story online at Missoulian.com.