Growth in Arlee worries some residents

The face of Arlee is changing.
It seems, every day, another business opens or closes. Locals struggle to make ends meet, yet are fiercely loyal to their community and neighbors.
Arlee elicits strong responses from its residents. It’s described as a place where one can express oneself, where casualness is king, where ambition isn’t a driving force. For many, it’s the only place they want to be.
“I think the Arlee Valley is somewhat enchanted,” said Debra Starratt, who moved here with her husband Chris from Missoula six years ago.
Chris is a carpenter, while Deb raises their children, volunteers and tends garden. It’s a simple life, but one they prefer. Still, it’s a lifestyle in danger in Arlee, which Deb describes as “the magic number of miles away from Missoula — thirty miles, thirty minutes.”
That close-but-far-enough distance has kept Arlee insulated in the past, but with the reworking of Highway 93 and the economic boom being weathered by Missoula, many people are looking at Arlee with new eyes.
Houses are taking the place of horses. Open land, once ranched, is being developed. According to a recent Internet search, bare land in the Arlee valley is ranging from $98,000 for four acres to $65,000 for a single acre.
“Some people are selling — of course they are — how could they not?” asks Starratt. True to Arlee’s supportive community, no one blames his neighbor.
“I have two of my kids who would like to buy land here but can’t afford it,” said Deb Espinoza, who works at Arlee’s Heart View center. “Starting out, you can’t do it,” she said. “You have to work for a long time to afford land here.”
“The community of Arlee needs to recognize that and set aside some open space, and assure there’s affordable housing,” said a community member. But who exactly has the power to do so?
“It would be nice if we could guide that growth,” said Donna Mollica, head of the Arlee Community Development Corp, “so that it grows with some feel for the sense of place.” But even in an advisory capacity, the CDC cannot dictate what landowners do.
Without some sort of overall design, Mollica said, the valley could end up facing problems with patchwork development similar to the Bitterroot.
Long live-and-let-live, the town of Arlee is not incorporated, so there is no governing board to fall back on when growth looms. The community relies on county zoning policies, which may or may not be adequate. And, many tracts of land are tribally owned.
Rumors of a new tribal business and housing development are bandied about. A number of locals say the 40 acres adjacent to the new community center will be turned over to condos, offices, and town homes — but Rob McDonald, tribal spokesman, can’t confirm that. So where do they come from, these tales of growth?
There’s the potential for Schall’s Flats. Just outside of town, the 5,000-acre parcel is selling for $21 million, Linda Zimorino said. She said the property, which she saw listed on the Internet, is slated for houses, and the 5,000 acres will be broken up into twenty-acre lots.
How many houses, how many new comers, will that bring to impact Arlee and mold its future?
Local carpenter Eric Ebinger lives a subsistence style life nearby. With his son Rio, he gardens, hunts, and cuts firewood.
“I haven’t been doing anything except processing food,” he says of his late summer days. The two hunt, fish and keep chickens for eggs and meat.
“We do our best to live off the land,” he says of his family’s lifestyle choice. They live in a small cabin on two acres. They use a grey water system for their garden. They have an outhouse instead of indoor plumbing.
“Keep it simple. I like it that way,” Ebinger says.
So what of the houses slowly creeping in around them?
“I hate to see the Bitterrootification of Arlee,” Ebinger says. “I hate seeing the light pollution and the cookie cutter houses.”
Ebinger says he and his son have “great star watching right in our back yard. But in ten years, that’ll be gone.”
His son has a different perspective. “I like the city,” ten-year old Rio says. “I just don’t like huge buildings.”
But after contemplating, Rio continues, “I think it’ll be terrible for Arlee if it turns into a Missoula. It won’t be Arlee any more.”
Until then, the Ebingers put up vegetables. They dry meat. They freeze as much as they can.
“We’ve got so much food,” Ebinger says. Their cabin’s shelves are full of home canned goods; their freezer is packed full. Ebinger does it, he said, to be able to spend quality time with his son.
“I just don’t want to be in debt,” he said.
He’d rather use what money he makes from his carpentry jobs to show his son the world.
The new houses, to him, are a mixed bag.
“I’m a carpenter-builder. That’s my bread and butter,” he says of the construction. And, like many others, he doesn’t feel he really has a say in what happens to the land around him.
“What can you do?” about people moving in and building, he asks. “You can’t tell people no.” And if Arlee grows too expensive, Ebinger says they’ll have no choice.
“We’ll have to move further away.”