As the state continues to investigate surveying the land the Montana Developmental Center sits on to help determine how it might be repurposed, state and local officials have been brainstorming potential new uses for the site.
Seven of those officials toured parts of the campus on Dec. 26 to fine-tune ideas that include providing services for veterans and vocational training for Jefferson High School students.
The tour was scheduled by Tom Harrington, MSU Extension Agent for Jefferson County and manager of the Jefferson Local Development Corporation, a countywide nonprofit economic development group, at the request of several members of groups focused on shaping Boulder’s post-MDC economy who were unfamiliar with parts or all of the site.
“It’s starting to come into focus,” said Jefferson County Commissioner Leonard Wortman toward the tour’s end.
Wortman, long familiar with the campus because his mother once worked there, has sought to bring parts of the site under County management.
“It’s so exciting to have this facility here that we couldn’t afford to build,” he said.
The only residential facility of its kind in Montana, the state-run Montana Developmental Center provided services to people with developmental disabilities for more than 100 years. A law enacted in 2015 mandated closing the center and transferring residents into community-based services.
Most of those residents have since been moved, though a dozen still live in a part of the facility called the Intensive Behavior Center, or IBC, which was created by legislation in 2017 to care for people the courts consider at risk of causing serious harm to themselves or others.
Boulder took an economic hit when the bulk of the MDC closed, for it had employed more than 200 people. Hoping to offset the loss, local governmental entities created three bodies — the Boulder Transition Advisory Committee, the Boulder Development Fund Board, and, most recently, the MDC Reutilization Committee — to map Boulder’s future.
Harrington and Wortman are among local officials working closely with all three groups, which also include other representatives from city and county government and community groups.
Tony Zufelt, an IBC staffer, was tour leader for the group, which included Jefferson County Planner LaDana Hintz and Jefferson County School District Superintendent Tim Norbeck. Zufelt walked the group past offices, nursing stations, classrooms and conference rooms — some still in use, many not. State officials are allowing the IBC to use some areas “until they decide what to do” with them, Zufelt said.
Tour highlights included a gleaming commercial kitchen; a large swimming pool where some have envisioned veterans undergoing aquatic therapy; and a voluminous gymnasium.
“I haven’t seen many state facilities that are like this,” said Nick Hensleigh, a Jefferson Local Development Committee member, partway through the tour. “It’d be a shame for this to be just closed up.”
Wortman and others have been especially hopeful for the site’s future following last fall’s formation of the MDC Reutilization Committee, which has brought together representatives from state and local government. The most promising news came from Rebecca de Camara of Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services, who told the committee at its Nov. 28 meeting that the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation was aiming to have the MDC site surveyed.
The survey is needed because the land is comprised of both state trust lands and non-state trust lands and owned by various entities, which dictate “different options for what can be done,” she told the committee.
“It really is a hidden gem,” Norbeck said the day following the tour. “It’s tough to see the facility standing unused.”
Norbeck participates in all three groups charged with finding a new use for the MDC, which he likes to point out is separated from Jefferson High School, where his office is, by “just a parking lot,” and well-positioned to become a resource for students.
The high school already has relationships with Helena College and Highlands College it could expand upon, Norbeck said, perhaps allowing the school to become a “feeder” school by offering apprenticeships to both students and veterans.
“We don’t get presented with opportunities [like this] too often,” Wortman said in an interview the day after the tour.
It would be “such a disservice or awful thing if we don’t do something” about it, he said.
Noting that, in the past, there “always seemed to be an obstacle somewhere we couldn’t overcome,” Wortman has done what he can to proceed smoothly this time — including getting his fellow commissioners to agree to commit county funds to cover the estimated $30,000 cost of the survey if the state were to hesitate paying for it. (The Boulder City Council also committed up to $15,000 of the city’s money toward paying for the survey.)
Wortman said, however, that Lt. Gov. Mike Cooney has told him he has been trying to find the money to pay for the survey.
“The Governor’s Office is working to identify any information that might be helpful moving forward in determining the future of the MDC campus,” Press Secretary Marissa Perry said by email. “The State is anxious to see if any real interest can be generated locally that has local support and that is complementary to the adjacent schools and facilities.”
The commissioner hasn’t been alone in speaking with a politician about Boulder and the MDC prior to the upcoming legislative session. The JLDC has written Cooney, as well as a handful of legislators, and Norbeck said he “cornered” a couple lawmakers at a recent meeting in Belgrade.
Rep. Greg Devries has “indicated a desire to get up to speed on the MDC and assist as needed,” Harrington said.
Perry wrote that the Governor’s Office is “not aware of any [MDC] legislation at this time.”
Meanwhile, there has been no word from the State on when the survey might start or end, or what might come after that.
