Downtown URD reports steady project spending; Bozeman Creek flood model, streetscape standard and 5th & Main lighting move toward design phase

Emily, a staff member, told the downtown partnership that Urban Renewal District (URD) revenue arrives unevenly and typically appears "at the very end of our fiscal year," meaning project cash flows can be lumpy.

The update outlined recent and upcoming expenditures: management fees for the downtown partnership; ongoing quarterly payments to Constructive Solutions for an alley project through April; street-furniture and park maintenance work; and small grants and mural payouts from the new CPTED enhancement grant program. Emily said the grant program already funded a mural behind the alley and a second mural paid to Bozeman Spirits (amounts reported in the meeting transcript as "5,004 or 10,002").

Why it matters: These project expenses and grant decisions feed into a draft fiscal year 2026 budget staff will circulate in February and revise in March, ahead of the commission review scheduled for May 6. The committee will use those budgets to determine URD allocations for capital work such as streetscape improvements and lighting.

On Bozeman Creek, Emily said consultants have completed modeling and delivered materials to the city; the next step is design work for restoration. She described the consultant model as a 100-year flood projection tool now in engineering review and said staff want to control presentation of findings before wide public release because the outputs can be alarming without context. She said the model will inform mitigation and design options the city and partnership will review in coming months.

Streetscape standards are in final review but are delayed because of a new requirement affecting light poles on Montana Department of Transportation (MDT) streets: poles must use breakaway-bolt assemblies. Emily said a factory-manufactured bolt option is not yet available, and available retrofit kits are visually and structurally unsatisfactory. The partnership is working with its lighting representative and Lumek to secure a manufactured product that meets the new code before finalizing the streetscape standard.

The 5th and Main lighting project has been slightly delayed, Emily said, but that delay gives staff time to lay conduit before concrete work proceeds. She noted the project will require additional approvals from MDT because the current lighting plan does not extend that far. If conduit is laid and permits obtained, staff warned expenses for hardware and conduit could be “above and beyond” the partnership’s usual capital contributions and asked members to be prepared to discuss larger budget asks in fiscal 2026.

Other smaller projects in the report included continued work on park planning (E Hope East Park), alley improvements, and completion of Allied's Bozeman Creek deliverables. Emily said the partnership received a Montana Main Street (MMS) grant that shares a $100,000 pool across several communities; that award prompted staff to plan a capital fundraising push to close remaining gaps for E Hope Park.

The committee did not take formal votes on these project approvals during the report; staff framed the items as updates to inform the FY26 budget process.