The Transitioning of Missoula’s Central Neighborhoods

In the August 18, 2007 issue of the Missoulian an article reporting the resignation of MCPS Superintendent Clark, Clark states:

“At the same time, the location of those children is changing.  For a school district that has many of its elementary school buildings concentrated in the center of town, that raises issues of building new schools closer to developing areas like Maloney Ranch.”

According to Dr. Swanson, however, who spoke at a MCPS meeting in 2004, it is preferable for central neighborhood schools to remain open/available and flexible as these neighborhoods are in transition.  The following is a partial transcript of Dr. Swanson’s presentation:

“So the question becomes where are all these folks going to live, all these 20 and 30 year olds?  They’re primarily going to live in homes that these folks (referring to retirees) steadily move out of.   One of the things we don’t completely understand is that housing stock transitions.  And so we look all around these neighborhoods and we’ve got 3 and 4 and 5 bedroom homes.  As people move (this column to the right-[the retirees]) they’re less likely to stay in that home forever, particularly if alternatives are presented to them. So you’re going to see an explosion in multi-family, townhouses, apartments, etc.  To the degree that Missoula does that well and there are good examples and bad examples, will determine how quickly these older folks either stay in those homes or move out to transition the housing stock." 

"So all these folks (the 20 to 30 year olds) won’t move out to the edge of town.  They will simply move back in as the housing stock transitions because its cheaper to buy existing square footage than it is to build square footage, if anybody’s been through that market before.  It’s more expensive to build than it is to buy.  So that’s one of the things we’ve got to consider in all this. So that’s going to happen.”

The above transcription illustrates that the central neighborhoods in our city are transitioning toward young families.  Despite the sale of Roosevelt School in 2005 at the present time Missoula has many available schools to re-open (Mount Jumbo, Prescott, Emma Dickenson, Jefferson and even Whittier) for the student population before building new schools at this time.  This information also validates keeping Hellgate High School open.

Note:  This document was created in approximately 2008, however, the information within it is more pertinent today than ever before. The need to open our closed schools is becoming more clear due to the change in our neighborhood demographics. (July 2012)