City seeks best ways to improve West Bank

Link to December 1 Great Falls Tribune article.

Excerpt:
For years, Great Falls' West Bank area resembled a battered prize fighter, bloodied and humbled.

These days, it looks more like the Comeback Kid, sporting a new look on the way to becoming a thriving commercial and parkland area.

City commissioners last year declared the West Bank an urban renewal area and authorized a system of tax-increment financing to pay for some of the work. Private developers will pay for the bulk of their own projects as well.

Already under construction is a new $16.4 million federal courthouse building, expected to be completed next spring or summer. The next big project is a $13.4 million Staybridge Suites hotel proposed on property owned by the Great Falls firm James Talcott Construction, just north of the courthouse project.

I haven't lived in Great Falls since July 1957, but I still remember crossing the Central Avenue West bridge from downtown and feeling as though we were entering a different place. Maybe it was the lack of trees.