The Montana Development Center campus in Boulder is now under the ownership of the Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services – a transfer that removed the land trust designation on the property.
Currently, there are no plans to transfer the property to Jefferson County, said Jefferson Local Development Corporation Project Coordinator Tom Harrington.
“The focus is on a viable property reutilization and then looking at what ownership structure makes sense,” he said.
And although the property has been transferred, the DPHHS does not have any plans for it at this time, according to the agency’s public information officer, Jon Ebelt.
Harrington said the transfer took about two years to complete.
Lands designated as in trust with the DNRC are used to generate revenue for schools, universities and more.
By transferring the land to the DPHHS, it opens up possibilities for use of the property, said Harrington at the Nov. 5 Boulder Transition Advisory Committee meeting.
The appraised value, determined in February, was $335,000 without the buildings, according to the DNRC. If the transfer out of land trust status had not occurred, the property would have to have been auctioned off, according to Mike Atwood, DNRC real estate bureau chief.
Harrington said the JLDC is working on an application geared on reusing the facility as a veterans pain and support clinic, as well as having received a Big Sky Trust Fund grant to look at reutilizing the kitchen on the property.
The transfer to the DPHHS was facilitated by a transfer of roughly 154 acres of property owned by the Department of Corrections that was moved into DNRC ownership. That property is located south of Boulder and was considered similar in value to the MDC property, making the transfer feasible.
The Montana Development Center closed in late 2018 and had once employed 250 people. Since its closure, the county has looked into different ways to utilize the property, which includes numerous buildings.
The JLDC has also recently submitted two brownfield grant applications for buildings five, six and nine on the south campus. Those grants are funded through the federal Environmental Protection Agency and deal with asbestos and lead paint.
The plan is to demolish building six and provide a clean piece of ground for future development.
Options for buildings five and nine include either fully or partially removing the asbestos and lead paint and reuse the buildings, or demolition.
