Las Vegas firm outbids two developers for state land near new high school

A Las Vegas company is buying 85 acres of state land south of the Glacier High School site.

Southwest Homes Inc. outbid two other firms at an auction Thursday in Kalispell to buy the land for $6.4 million. The sale is scheduled to be completed Monday.

The company is considering building a combination of houses, apartments and condominiums, plus some possible light commercial structures in that area, said Todd Slusher, Southwest Homes president.

Plans have not been mapped out yet. Slusher speculated it will take from four to six months before Southwest Homes takes a detailed plan to Kalispell's city government.

He said the company might build roughly 800 housing units on that land, which is also next to where the proposed U.S. 93 bypass is supposed to be built. The property is west of the Kidsport athletic-field complex.

Southwest Homes has built housing developments and shopping centers in Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico and California. The Kalispell project is a diversification move, Slusher said.

Thursday's auction was the first part of a state plan to sell 20,000 acres of Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation land that is either isolated from public access or does not produce income for the state's schools. Overall, the state has about 5 million acres in this school-trust program.

Although the state has auctioned land, Thursday's sale was the first in which the proceeds specifically will pay for new lands that the state will buy to provide money for education. In 2003, the Legislature allowed selling unproductive school-trust land for this purpose.

Three companies - Southwest Homes, Touchmark Development and Construction Co. of Beaverton, Ore., and LPO Properties of Kalispell - spent a half hour Thursday bidding on the land.

The bidding began at $3.532 million, or $41,553 an acre. Southwest Homes' winning bid translates to $75,294 an acre.