Amazon may be eyeing a spot near Helena for its next Montana warehouse location, but is at the early stages of the city’s planning process, according to city commissioners and staff.
City Commissioner Julia Gustafson raised a question about the project during a Monday evening city commission meeting after receiving a public comment about it earlier this week.
“We also received public comment this week … about a possible Amazon warehouse. Can you clarify maybe some of the confusion that’s out there about this?” Gustafson asked city staff.
During the Monday meeting, city planner Michael Alvarez responded to Gustafson by confirming that applications had been submitted to the city, but did not mention Amazon as the entity behind the request. A copy of the application available on the city’s website lists Kimley-Horn and Associates, an engineering, planning and design consultant company that has helped develop other Amazon facilities, as one of the applicants. The proposal describes the development of a “distribution center,” but does not list Amazon by name.
How quickly could a distribution center pop up at the proposed location? Not very quickly.
Alvarez said that the applications are for pre-zoning and annexation for a parcel of unincorporated Lewis and Clark County land near Mountain View Meadows, east of I-15 and south of Highway 12. Helena’s future land-use map has that area zoned as B-2, or mixed-use, and does not allow a distribution center.
“[The applicants] would need to be pre-zoned, annexed, and after annexation, apply for a conditional use permit to operate a warehouse or distribution center in that location,” Alvarez told commissioners. “They’ve been offered no guarantees of any sort of approval at this time.”
City staff won’t be able to access a conditional use permit until annexation, he clarified.
Pre-zoning is the first step in the process for the city to designate a zoning classification to a portion of land before annexation. During the Monday meeting, Alvarez said the project’s pre-zoning application was scheduled to go before the city’s zoning commission on April 12.
But that step has now been delayed after the city’s community development staff realized the pre-zone application was incomplete, Helena Public Information Officer Amanda Opitz told Montana Free Press in a Wednesday email.
Staff noticed that the transportation impact study submitted by the applicant did not adequately address future traffic impacts, according to Opitz.
“The [transportation impact study] is important for evaluating compliance with applicable zoning and transportation standards,” Opitz wrote. “Staff does not believe the record is sufficient at this time to support informed zoning commission deliberation.”
Opitz added that city staff will recommend that the zoning commission table the application until the applicant resubmits a revised impact study before returning to the zoning commission.
If that application is resubmitted, there would still be many other review steps and public meetings in order for the proposal to proceed.
Once the zoning commission takes action on the pre-zone application, it would forward its recommendation to the city commission for consideration at a meeting, which will include both the pre-zone and annexation items. Opitz said that the meeting would occur about 30 to 45 days after the zoning commission meeting.
If the resolution is passed, the applicant or the project’s development team would need to ensure that the proposal meets any conditions of annexation before the city commission could approve a final annexation resolution.
But that wouldn’t be the end of the road.
After the land has been officially added to city limits, the applicant would need to have a conditional use permit approved under the city’s zoning process.
“[A] ‘Green light’ would be given after that final zoning action has been approved, whenever that may be,” Opitz added.
During Monday night’s meeting, Gustafson reiterated that this project was still in the early stages and that the public would have time to submit comments about the proposal.
According to online city planning documents, the address listed for the project is 3645 Alice St., and is described as a “development across the street from Crosswoods Parkway from the site location … with the intent to be a Warehouse Distribution Center, zoned as Industrial.”
If the application passes the city’s standards and gets approved, it would be one of several Amazon developments in Montana. Facilities have opened up in Missoula, Belgrade, Butte, Kalispell, Great Falls and Billings, all with varying fulfillment and delivery operation capacities.
The most recent additions were in Kalispell and Great Falls, where locations opened their doors last month. Missoula opened the state’s first Amazon location in March of 2024, with a 71,000-square-foot building that generated over 100 jobs.
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