Heritage area plans advancing

The group pursuing a National Heritage Area designation for the Great Falls region is moving ahead.

The Upper Missouri River Heritage Area Planning Corp. was established last year and is planning its next public meeting for April 1.

The meeting is a “chance to look at our work and see if we missed something,” said Ellen Sievert of the Great Falls-Cascade County Historic Preservation Office.

Meetings in January and February 2015 were designed to gauge public interest in pursuing the NHA designation from the National Park Service, which requires congressional action.

Now, the group leading the charge wants to update the community on their progress and the next steps.

The group now has a board of directors, many of which were selected in May. The board is made up of Sievert; Gayle Fisher, Central Montana Tourism Region; Jane Weber, Cascade County commissioner; Tracy Houck, Great Falls city commissioner and director of Paris Gibson Square Museum of Art; John Tallie with Montana State Parks; Lindy Hatcher, Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation; Ruthann Knudson, Knudson Associates; Ken Robison, historian; Jerry Lehman, JCCS CPAs; and Lynette Scriver-Colburn, Cascade County United Way.

Carol Bronson, Downtown Development Partnership; Michael Duchemin, C.M. Russell Museum; and Mary Sexton, Montana Parks and Recreation Board are ex-officio board members.

The group is an independent entity and has local government support but is not driven by the city or county.

Documents for submission to the Internal Revenue Service for tax-exempt status have been approved by the board, but haven’t been submitted yet since the group waiting for its tax identification number from the IRS, said Bill Bronson, the group’s legal counsel and a Great Falls commissioner.

Bronson said he expects to have that number the week of March 21 and anticipates filing the tax-exempt application before the end of March.

The group has adopted bylaws and been approved by the state.

National Heritage Areas “are designated by Congress as places where national, cultural and historic resources combine to form a cohesive, nationally important landscape,” according to the National Park Service.

There are 49 NHAs in the U.S.; none is in Montana.

“This will be a first for Montana, which is important,” Sievert said.

A fundamental requirement for NHA designation is that a community or region show a complex of attractions of national significance that are organized into themes. The region has plenty of possible themes to choose from and the group has settled on six major themes.

Those themes are Ice Age and American Indian history; exploration and settlement, which includes Lewis and Clark; transportation; military; industrial and art.

Many of the existing NHAs focus on single theme areas, Sievert said, “I think we’re unusual in that we have such a variety.”

Sievert said those broad themes include numerous attractions of national significance, but they want public input at the April 1 meeting to make sure they haven’t overlooked something major. She said if the NHA designation is achieved, they can then expand the themes to cover more areas.

There are two national landmarks in Great Falls; one is the Charlie Russell house and studio, the other is the Lewis and Clark Portage, which is includes about 7,000 acres spread across the region, Sievert said.

The proposed boundary for the Upper Missouri River heritage area includes all of Cascade and Chouteau counties, plus Gates of the Mountains. It starts at the Upper Missouri River Break National Monument area on the west end and extends northward including Fort Benton and Gates of the Mountains on the southwest end.

“You begin to see how important that river corridor is and all the history that’s attached to it,” Sievert said.

The next step in the NHA process is a feasibility study. To do so, the group needs to raise $50,000 by December to finance the study immediate operational needs, such as a website, displays, database, publications and meetings.

City staffers in the planning and mapping officers are currently developing a database of images, resource date and creating a multilayer GIS map of the proposed NHA area.

Once a NHA is established, the group becomes eligible for $150,000 of matched federal funds to develop a management plan for the NHA. The match for that funding can be in the form of in-kind contributions, such as city staff time and resources. After that, the NHA is eligible for $300,000 in federal matched funds.

Even if the local region is designated an NHA and receives federal funding, the area wouldn’t be subject to any federal restrictions or regulations because of the designation.

Lee Nellis, former city planning deputy director, said in 2015 that the NHA is also a marketing and tourism tool for the region, as well as an economic driver.

According to a report by TrippUmbach that looked at the economic impact of NHAs, the projected annual economic benefit of all 49 NHA sites on the nation’s economy is $12.9 billion. The NHAs support nearly 150,000 jobs and $1.2 billion in federal taxes from sources such as employee compensation, proprietor income, indirect business tax, households and corporations.

Want to go?

When: April 1

Time: 5:30-7:30 p.m.

Where: Missouri Room, Great Falls Civic Center, 2 Park Drive S.

For more information, call 455-8435.