Partnerships MATTER

It's not often that you get to turn back the clock and totally undo a giant speculative project from the last real estate boom. But WE DID IT! 

As you may recall, 300 Main was arguably the largest speculative project in the history of Teton Valley:  a 400,000 square foot development next to Broulim’s, with 292 underground parking spaces, 19 buildings, 5 restaurants, and 199 housing units. For reference, 400,000 square feet is roughly equal to the size of eight Broulim’s.

To view the 2006 project and original marketing plan in more detail, click here to see the old 300 Main website that we pulled up from the historical web archive. 

Once the City of Dirggs approved the project, the beloved Butler house and "Butler Trees" that were located onsite were bulldozed in anticipation of building 300 Main while the real estate market was red hot.  

But this was premature, and the market crashed. Nothing was built onsite, and the 300 Main project has been for sale over almost 15 years now. The southern end of the project is the more fragile half of the property. It often has standing water in the spring. The original 300 Main plat showed thatthese fragile areas were going to be heavily developed. 

The southern half of 300 Main has also been mapped and formally identified by Teton County as wetlands and Songbird/Raptor breeding and wintering habitat.

Having been opposed to 300 Main for many years, Valley Advocates saw an opportunity to finally achieve a positive outcome once all the extensions expired at the end of 2019. We partnered with the owner/developers of the 300 Main project to untangle these out-dated entitlements from 2006. Together, we wiped the slate clean on this enormous mixed-use development in Driggs. With the consent of the 300 Main team, VARD paid the $1,200 plan vacation fees to the City, and our staff drafted and compiled the application materials to file the vacation petition. On March 2, 2021 the Driggs City Council voted unanimously to vacate the plat and all accompanying recorded agreements!

Christian Cisco, real estate representative for the project, praised this achievement: “The clean slate this prime development property will now enjoy provides any potential new owner with a blank canvas to create a wide variety of new uses in concert with our community’s needs for both today and tomorrow.”

As a nice windfall for doing the right thing,our staff attorney Anna Trentadue was also able to ensurethat the 300 Main team received 3 free city sewer hookups out of the deal, which was part of an old sewer easement agreement that predated the 300 Main project. Worth about $1,200 at the time of the old agreement, these municipal hookups are now worth $7,875. 

With the slate wiped clean, something fresh and new can be creatively done with this precious piece of downtown land.#partnershipsmatter