A couple dozen people took a quick stroll around downtown Kalispell on Wednesday, looking for ways to make it a friendlier place for bicyclists and pedestrians. 

Ideas didn’t take long to surface during the “walking audit.”

Several people rode their bikes to Depot Park where the walk started. Randy Kenyon, a member of the Kalispell City Council and someone who regularly pedals around downtown, was one of them. They all had to find a spare bench or tree to chain their bikes to before setting off on the eight-block walk.

Jennifer Young, recreation superintendent for Kalispell Parks and Recreation, apologized for the park’s lack of a bike rack. It went missing some time ago and has never been replaced. 

“The rack got stolen,” she said.

An almost complete lack of bike racks downtown was just one observation that participants raised as a possible improvement as they walked along Center Street, First Avenue West and Main Street.

Drinking fountains were nonexistent as the sun beat down. Trash cans were scarce in places. Sketchy bike lanes on Main Street and First Avenue East start and stop in strange places and are not clearly marked as bike lanes. 

Drivers use the bike lanes on Main Street as right turn lanes, so it might be best that they aren’t used much by bicyclists. “They’re only for the hard-core bikers. And they’re all dead,” one participant said about the bike lanes over the roar of passing traffic.

Downtown’s bike routes might need to be reinvented, especially with city officials trying to pull out the railroad tracks and build a new linear park through the railroad corridor just north of downtown. 

Like Kalispell’s often spotty network of sidewalks, the existing bike routes don’t run all the way through downtown, let alone connect to other trails in and around the city or to neighborhoods, schools, parks, shopping areas and other places someone might want to go without hopping in a vehicle.

Maybe it would be best to run bike routes along First Avenues East and West and other periphery roads. 

Whatever the route, Kalispell needs functioning and clearly marked bike lanes so bicyclists don’t ride through town switching between bike lanes, sidewalks and busy streets and putting themselves and other people at risk, another participant said.

Sidewalks peter out around Kalispell Center Mall, a major downtown anchor. And crosswalks leading to the mall need some fresh white paint before they fade out of sight into the gray asphalt of Center Street.

Walkers encountered mysterious, shin-threatening fire hydrants sprouting from the middle of sidewalks on First Avenue West. 

They briefly marveled at the decayed appearance of city-owned parking lots with their crumbling asphalt and dead landscaping and walked through a gauntlet of parking signs that pop out of the sidewalks along Main Street.

The goal of the walking audit is to start creating a conceptual plan to improve the usefulness and safety of pedestrian routes downtown. Such an event raises awareness and gets people thinking about problems and solutions. 

“It’s all about accessibility, safety and connectivity,” Parks and Recreation Director Mike Baker said about sidewalks and bike paths in Kalispell and the work that lies ahead.

Some of the desired improvements that get identified in the conceptual plan might take years or even decades to plan and implement. Pam Carbonari, coordinator of the Kalispell Business Improvement District and Kalispell Downtown Association, is hoping some inexpensive improvements can be fit into budgets and help make things better in the meanwhile.

“The crosswalks are in dire need of being painted,” Carbonari said. “We’re missing bike racks and a water fountain downtown. The whole way we walked on First Avenue West there was no trash can. Maybe there’s a way of striping the lanes differently on First Avenue East or West to actually create a bike lane. I think a lot of things we could see in this downtown core would make it a little more pedestrian friendly and take care of some of the issues.”  

Reporter Tom Lotshaw may be reached at 758-4483 or by email at tlotshaw@dailyinterlake.com.

TWIN FALLS • Inside Glanbia’s new downtown center, food scientists soon will look to explore new cheese frontiers, revitalize the company’s passion and expand its footprint in the global cheese industry.

Those in the local business community have equally lofty expectations of how the center’s arrival could help revitalize the downtown, local and regional economy.

“It’s a really big deal, and I’m just blown away,” said Jan Rogers, executive director of the Southern Idaho Economic Development Organization.

Glanbia’s 14,000-square-foot Cheese Innovation Center and three-story, 35,000-square-foot corporate headquarters will house about 100 employees. The company will hold a grand opening celebration Wednesday, Aug. 7.

“The idea is to create a little more passion for cheese for all of our employees,” Glanbia President and CEO Jeff Williams said. “Having a physical asset that does that is a daily reminder that’s what we’re all about — creating passion around cheese, being more excited about it and getting involved with our customers.”

Those close to the situation expect the center to generate a four-fold growth — cheese production within the company, Glanbia employees generating more downtown business, leading growth in downtown vitality and strengthening the national business magnet that Twin Falls has become.

“I think it just takes a little bit of momentum, and I think we’ve provided a pretty good boost down there,” Williams said. “We’re really excited about being downtown, and there’s a buzz around the place and getting everybody moved under one roof.”

Growing from Within

Wednesday’s grand opening will feature speakers starting at 10 a.m. and guided tours of the recently completed center at 161 Fourth Ave. S.

The event is open to the business community, and tours can be reserved on a first-come, first-served basis, marketing manager Whitney Beem said. The event also will feature cheese tastings in an “around-the-world format,” she said.

The innovation center will allow Glanbia to experiment with cheese by making small, 100-pound batches instead of the 1,000-pound lots the company makes now at its local commercial plants, Williams said.

Food scientists will work “shoulder to shoulder” with customers to make new cheeses. Williams said he’s coining the phrase “innovation around the edges” to illustrate that the company won’t stray far from what has made it successful — high-volume, low-cost, top-quality commodity cheese.

“Our goal is to be more and more relevant to our customers,” he said. When someone “has an idea, we’ll be on their speed dial.”

Glanbia expects about 60 percent of the innovation center’s work to come from customers’ ideas. About 30 percent will be ideas generated from marketplace trends, and 10 percent will be “blue sky or serendipitous” activity, he said. The latter is where Glanbia will let its scientists “play around.“

Cheese innovation is a broad subject, but “accelerated aging” is an example of what the company hopes to accomplish, Williams said. Scientists can use certain enzymes to mature cheese more quickly than the natural aging process.

A culinary center will let employees use the cheese the same way customers do.

“We can bake it, stretch it, cook it — do things that our customers would do with it, like put it on a pizza,” he said. “Then we’ll be able to shred it, slice it, dice it, chunk it and those sorts of things.“

In March, Glanbia bought a Blackfoot cheese plant one-third the size of its Twin Falls factory specifically to be an “incubator plant,“ Williams said.

“So the plan is to take the things we make in the cheese innovation center, and then we’ll go to commercialize those. Once a customer gives us a big order, we’ll want to make the cheese on a commercial basis, and we’ll take it to our Blackfoot plant.“

The idea for the innovation center came from a “very successful” similar model Glanbia uses in its whey protein division.

“I can’t think of any of our competitors that have a cheese innovation center like we’ll have,” Williams said.

Planting a Seed

Glanbia employees moved into their new offices about two weeks ago, and Williams said he’s seen what their presence can do for downtown businesses. He went to a small area restaurant the other day and saw nine Glanbia employees already there.

“I think it’ll be huge for downtown Twin Falls,” he said. “People are just going to go out the door, hit Main Avenue and hit some of the sandwich places. I’m hoping that someone opens up a few more restaurants down there.“

A few blocks down from the new Glanbia center, Adair Johnson was busy Monday, July 29, hanging a chandelier from Stonehouse and Co.’s ceiling. Johnson and his wife hope to open the building in mid-August for catering events.

Glanbia will be a magnet that draws people to the area and allows other businesses to thrive, Johnson predicted.

“We’re glad to have them in the area, and it’s going to … benefit everybody,” he said.

Johnson said he’s also reassured by Glanbia’s presence. Although much of Stonehouse’s business will come from elsewhere, he said he hopes the cheese company will notice his space.

“In the business that we’re in, we hope to host some of Glanbia’s meetings and parties and stuff like that,” he said. “It’ll be very beneficial. But a lot of our (business) is going to be weddings and several business meetings, as well.“

Ryan Horsley, general manager of Red’s Trading Post in the warehouse district near Stonehouse, said he is pleased to see Glanbia moving into the neighborhood. Although Glanbia employees might not be his direct customers, he said, it’s exciting to be part of business growth.

“You bring these people down, and they want a place to shop, they want a place to go eat,” he said. “It drives more people down here.“

Glanbia and St. Luke’s Magic Valley Patient Financial Services building, remodeled in 2010 from the old Crumb Building, showcase the area’s potential, he said.

Several other new restaurants and businesses have decided to build or move into downtown in recent years, said Horsley, a former member of the Twin Falls Planning and Zoning Commission.

Lots are cheap and plentiful, and empty warehouses can be renovated or torn down to accommodate growth constrained by Twin Falls’ natural barriers — the Snake River Canyon to the north and Rock Creek to the west, he said.

“A lot of people don’t see it right away, but if you take a look at the growing trend, the momentum that’s building, there’s a lot of exciting things that are happening (downtown),” Horsley said.

Gaining Momentum

The warehouse district just off Main Avenue looks “significantly different” than it did five years ago, said city spokesman Joshua Palmer. The city’s Urban Renewal Agency (URA) has helped clean and develop the area, he said.

“If you would have looked at those streets five years ago, the curb was at best gravel and the road was not very good,” Palmer said. “There was no parking, dirt fields and a closed-down nightclub” where Glanbia now sits.

URA spent $1.25 million preparing the Glanbia site, said Melinda Anderson, director of URA and the city’s economic department. That money went to the purchase price, demolition, new water and sewer, wastewater treatment, landscaping, streets and sidewalk improvements, parking, power, gas and telecommunications, she said.

Extra property taxes collected from the land’s higher value will go back to URA to pay off those costs, Anderson said. Some of the upgrades — such as water and sewer lines — also will benefit other projects, she said.

“The more developments like Glanbia, like St. Luke’s, helps other developers realize, ’Oh, that is worth developing. Let’s go down and see what we can do.’”

A strong downtown is important to any city, said Mark Lopshire, board chairman for the Twin Falls Chamber of Commerce. If a city’s focus shifts away from downtown, the tax base can be lost and the area becomes dilapidated. A vibrant, healthy downtown gives a town flavor, history and a sense of belonging, he said.

“If you go out to Blue Lakes or Pole Line, what’s the personality there? Great businesses, but you don’t have that historical personality that a downtown has and a city needs,” Lopshire said.

A nice downtown is also a corporate recruiting tool, Anderson said. Companies hiring from out of the area want to make sure their employees enjoy a good quality of life.

Lopshire said Glanbia’s new facility and business leaders’ focus on downtown are the next steps in future, sustainable regional business.

“You look at Glanbia, and they are a national and a global company, and they have people coming in from all over the U.S., all over the world. And they take a look at that building and that downtown, and they say, ’This is a great place,’” he said.

Rogers agreed. Glanbia will brighten the spotlight shining on Twin Falls as a premier food research and production destination. The area has added cheese and whey innovation to its already strong base of sugar, aquaculture, bean and seed research.

The cluster of expert food scientists working across all those fields can be used as a recruiting tool as well, further cementing the excitement building in the area, Rogers said.

“We are the food kings of Idaho,” she said.

GAINESVILLE – The North Central Texas College Horticulture department will be offering two new degree plans starting this fall.

One will be a marketable skills award in Landscape Design, while the second is a certificate in Sustainable Horticulture.

“A marketable skills award is kind of like a certificate in that it kind of pinpoints and targets a few classes that are absolutely necessary for the industry,” NCTC Horticulture instructor Ashley Hartman explained. “From that, students can kind of stair-step into certificates or an Associate’s degree.”

The certificate in Sustainable Horticulture may be the only program of its nature in the entire state of Texas, according to Hartman.

“Being able to meet the needs of that industry and kind of train those that are entering the ‘green’ industry is really important,” she said. “The whole premise of sustainability is just kind of to take care of our Earth and our land so it can take care of us, not only now but for future generations.”

The program will feature five different classes including Introduction to Sustainable Ag, Greenhouse Management, Naturalistic Gardening, Food Crops and Small Farming.

“What we are planning to do is offer that class at several small farms and the farmers themselves will teach the class,” Hartman said. “Students will be able to go through an entire growing season with the farmers. Everything from planting the seeds, tending the crops, harvesting them and then preparing them for market.”

The marketable skills award in Landscape Design includes three classes.

The first is Landscape Design where students learn how to sketch out their landscaping ideas.

“I’ve had students take just that class in the past and then start their own businesses because it’s such a thorough class,” Hartman said. “There are not only students who want to enter the workforce in that class, but also hobbyists. So folks who just love to landscape and would like to take a class to know what they are doing in their own yards.”

There is also a second-semester class in Advanced Landscape Design, which utilizes computer applications.

“Students take what they learned in the basic class and apply it using CAD programs,” Hartman explained.

The third class is in Landscape Irrigation.

“Students learn all about drip irrigation and sprinkler systems, how to install them and how to plan for them so they can go on and receive their state certification,” Hartman said.

The instructor said that students do not have to take the classes in any certain order. Also, there are no prerequisites and no testing that has to be done to enter the program.

For more information on the Horticulture program at NCTC, contact Hartman at 940-668-7731 Ext. 4488 or by email at ahartman@nctc.edu.