Is Bozeman, Montana, A Heralded “It” City In America, Losing Its Historic Memory?

by Todd Wilkinson

A core tenet of populism is that politicians must heed the sentiments of common local people, especially those who have had a long tenure in a given place.

Of anyone in recent decades elected to serve on the Bozeman City Commission, Alison Sweeney’s ancestral ties to this town founded in 1864 and to the surrounding Gallatin Valley, may be unprecedented. Six generations strong, Sweeney’s perspective is informed by history—and it’s Bozeman’s reverence for history, a central part of its charm, that, in addition to natural setting, has given it a high profile in the so-called New West.

Read Yellowstonian’s interview with Sweeney that happened before she became a new member of the city commission in January 2026. The issues she addresses, however, are not novel to Bozeman; they’re part of deepening tensions found in every attractive mountain town in the West.

But before you heed her point of view, consider this: there’s a not so subtle populist stirring happening today in Bozeman, a community that, in recent years, has gained notice as one of the fastest growing micropolitan—small cities—in America. 

While manifestations of that growth are most visible in the way jarring sprawl has overtaken former farmland in the Gallatin Valley, sent wildlife roadkill counts soaring on major highways, and created subdivisions crowding stream corridors, peppering the flanks of mountain foothills and public lands rimming the valley, something else has happened inside Bozeman itself.

At the same time the pastoral character of the countryside increasingly resembles that of, say, Fort Collins along the Front Range of the Colorado Rockies, an array of head-spinning development is transforming humble working-class neighborhoods located in close proximity to Bozeman’s downtown Main Street. They stand in sharp contrast to an ethic of historic preservation that safeguarded the appeal of Old Bozeman through height restrictions, stylistic architectural consistency and even deference for humility over audacity. Those street blocks, lacking pretension, once symbolized a town that never had to declare what it wanted to be because it was in plain sight. 

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At this very moment, drastic changes could be in store for Bozeman’s downtown skyline that visually has offered a connection from Main Street to the Bridger Mountains. With little public awareness, developers have aggressively pushed to expand the current height restriction on buildings in the central core from 70 to 90 feet. State law demands a minimum height of 60 feet. This comes at a time when neighboring towns, like Livingston, have aggressively held the line on height restrictions, saying they are vital to maintaining the historic integrity of their downtown.

There is little evidence to suggest that the historic height limit in downtown Bozeman has curtailed “prosperity,” or that it has cost jobs, or that going higher with buildings will enhance dwelling affordability for locals earning modest wages. Nor is there any sense that citizens have adequately been apprised or made aware of the significant permanent impact that would forever alter the visual ambiance of downtown. Smart, long-time, well-informed citizens say it’s yet another example of the city failing to articulate the implications of its actions.

And it’s merely the latest manifestation of change happening like a multi-headed Hydra that began at the dawn of this new century, and accelerated during the Covid years when Bozeman became “discovered” by capital investors like never before, just as nearby Big Sky did. Bozeman has been viewed as a place where opportunistic developers are able to exploit weaknesses in local planning and, in some cases, move to undermine zoning. While the moniker “Bozangeles” is often invoked in describing the sprawl, a better term for historic Bozeman may be its architectural “Big Sky-ification”—and that’s not a compliment.

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If one visits inner Bozeman today you will find blocks of multi-story structures flanking Main Street, some of which appear, in their neo-modern blandness, as if they were designed by urban planners who have no understanding of the novelty of Bozeman. Generic, unimaginative, stark of palette and consistent with any found in any city in North America, they are displacing welcoming low-slung edifices that housed working class folk. The paradox is that Bozeman’s North Side, pictured in photos above, was historically a place where the so-called toiling underclass could afford to live yet forces in recent years, claiming to be driven by “Smart Growth” but in name only, have preyed upon its vulnerabilities.

As one example, a trailer park and its residents of single moms with kids, veterans with disabilities existing on Medicare and others holding multiple jobs to make ends meet, got supplanted—read permanently uprooted— by new duplexes sold to newcomers for six and seven figures each.

Nearby, luxury apartments rent for between $2500 and $4000/month—or between $30,000 and $48,000/year for rent. This in a town where, according to the US Census Bureau and other sources, per capita income is around $50,000 and median household income around $80,000.

Median household income by age group breaks out this way (as of 2023): under 25: $37,155; 25 to 44: $91,000; 45 to 64: $107,000; and 65 and older: almost $69,000 (which often is a blend of social security and interest on retirement). Nationally, the primar formula for gauging housing affordability is that total monthly housing costs (mortgage or rent, taxes and insurance) should not exceed 28 percent of gross monthly income.

Bozeman has 48 individual listed properties on the National Register of Historic Places. Plus, it has several historic districts showcasing late 19th/early 20th century architecture, from Queen Anne homes to modest bungalows.

Once upon a time Bozeman’s historic downtown was, foremost, a hub to which locals felt belonging, but now it caters to short-term passersby or new arrivals with significantly greater means. Some of the owners of “upscale, luxury” apartments, shops and eateries are actually people who have second homes in Big Sky or Paradise Valley or even Jackson Hole and who want to have a place where they can have fun strolling Bozeman’s main drag before flying out in the morning on their private jets.

The late Tim Crawford, who was among the first to restore a beloved historic building on Bozeman’s Main Street, and believed in rallying behind it when developers and big box corporate juggernauts in the 1990s were blazing strip malls into former farmlands along North 19th Avenue, often said towns are destined to change and grow but not in dumb ways. Crawford, who before moving to the Gallatin Valley served on the Ketchum Town Council in Sun Valley, Idaho, had soft spot in his heart for Bozeman’s working underdogs. He penned regular letters to the editor of the Bozeman Daily Chronicle and wrote a column for a publication that I founded but am no longer affiliated with. Crawford and his wife, Kathy, owned a farm in the rural outskirts of Belgrade along the Gallatin River and put it under a conservation easement with the Gallatin Valley Land Trust. 

One of Crawford’s columns, a symbolic one, drew attention to the sale of a trailer park. We walked the site as the mobile homes were hauled away. Crawford’s essay was titled “Remember 2018 When ‘Creative Destruction’ Leveled A Bozeman Trailer Park To Create ‘More Prosperity?” It was subtitled “Tim Crawford wonders how much empathy the new Bozeman has for those that prosperity sent packing.”

Crawford’s conclusion: not much. Several trailer parks have disappeared, social service needs for struggling families and individuals have soared in general and landlords of businesses and apartments have, invoking the term, “market forces,” raised rents. One of his favorite charities was a private, non-profit group called HRDC that serves as a safe place for people facing tough times.A major HRDC thrust is providing food and shelter for the poor. (You can read Crawford’s essay about the trailer park in its entirety by clicking here. It is still remarkably timely, compassionate and prescient).

Tim Crawford’s essay was titled “Remember 2018 When ‘Creative Destruction’ Leveled A Bozeman Trailer Park To Create ‘More Prosperity?” It was subtitled “Tim Crawford wonders how much empathy the new Bozeman has for those that prosperity sent packing.”

Crawford’s conclusion: not much.

Something worth pondering is this: what happens to a metaphorical Bedford Falls when its civic locus of gravity becomes less and less relevant to those of modest means who gave blood, sweat and tears to creating a community worth living in across generations? Who are the protectors of community and who profits most from their exploitation?

Much transfiguration has happened in the neighborhoods and hinters around Bozeman because developers, many of them representing outside capital investment firms, today wield far more power. They claim that by taking advantage of incentives, seeking variances to local codes, and flexing legal muscle, as they’ve done in other places, and using it to have more intimidating sway in determining the fate of traditional neighborhoods with single-family homes, more density will appreciably address a serious lack of affordable housing. That promise of significantly more affordable housing hasn’t materialized.

But this, of course, isn’t only a vexing problem endemic to Bozeman, for it afflicts most mountain towns in the Rockies and burgs across the country. In Jackson Hole, where Teton County has 97 percent public land and three percent private, that ratio is blamed for hyper real estate values fueled by limited supply and demand from a continuous inflow of multi-millionaires and billionaires who also take advantage of Wyoming’s liberal tax codes.

Bozeman is an acute example of something a little different. It’s not about a shortage of developable real estate. It is owed to a much larger inflow, in number, of affluent retirees, well-paid newcomers who work here remotely, youngish trust fund and tech hipsters, the proliferation of legal and illegal vacation and short-term rentals, and escalating property taxes causing older residents to sell. Like a wildfire whipped by winds that create its own incendiary weather, there’s been a form of extreme real-estate speculation that has put the city and Gallatin County into a reactionary posture of being overwhelmed and just trying to keep up. What is the source of the big money that’s been poured into Bozeman development? No one fully knows but there is a lot of real estate in Bozeman and the Gallatin Valley being sold by firms based in Big Sky.

Libertarians and their think-tanks continue to promote the unproven trope that packing neighborhoods with density—i.e. treating it as a simple supply-demand dynamic— will achieve economic affordability. The irony is they have found a strange marriage with social justice activists on the political Left, those organizing tenants’ rights organizations and spouting the so-called rhetoric of Woke, that portrays historic preservation, traditional land conservation and those who support it as being the alleged domain of exclusion-minded racists, NIMBYs and homophobes.

Not only is the latter unsubstantiated, but it is deeply offensive to compassionate residents in the middle normally sympathetic to the cause of equity. This kind of miscalculation helps explain why Democrats have lost credibility and ground in the state legislature which itself has been overtly hostile to sensible planning and zoning. Homeowners living in the historic Centennial, Bon Ton, Cooper Park, Lindley, South Black and South and North Tracy neighborhoods have been disparaged as NIMBYs and “obstructionists” for opposing five or six story structures invading their peaceful confines. Ironic since a recent public involvement process, led by consultants and highlighted in a survey and report shows strong citizen support for the very kinds of historic values residents have fought for— to protect against ruination by development.

Throwing intrigue into the mix are the ongoing anonymous commentaries of an entity called The Gallatin Valley Sentinel that says it is a watchdog of local government and a conservative voice for land use planning and culture. Over the years it has highlighted alleged alliances between the far political right and left, publishing some of its opinions in places like Bozeman Magazine.

Meantime, the state continues to heed the recommendations of free market ideologues advising Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte and forcing neighborhoods to incur more density against their will. Never mentioned is how some pushing that agenda happily dwell themselves in exclusive gated subdivisions with single family residences where homeowners’ association covenants protect their quality of life by mandating larger lot sizes and quasi-government regulations that prohibit the kinds of lenient maneuvering they want builders to enjoy in the historic neighborhoods of others.

One of the governor’s staunch allies in Bozeman is Mark Egge who has found his way onto a seat on the Bozeman Community Development Board that has played a key role in municipal code revisions. He also served on Gianforte’s Housing Task Force and has been a consultant to a libertarian think-tank called the Frontier Institute connected to many other free-market organizations pushing limited government, anti-regulation and property rights first agendas. Egge, the Frontier Institute, and the Housing Task Force have unabashedly pushed to reduce or eliminate regulations that impede development.

Egge, who ran unsuccessfully for a seat on the Bozeman City Commission in 2019, has co-opted Woke language by calling regulations that limit what kind of housing neighborhoods can have as “discriminatory.” He wrote a guest column that appeared in the Bozeman Daily Chronicle in 2024 and his arguments were challenged by the paper’s editorial board. “’We must build, build, build’ to bring down housing costs, [Egge] argued,” the editorial board wrote. “Egge blames Bozeman’s severe lack of affordable housing on zoning that prohibits high-density multi-unit construction in traditional single-family neighborhoods and on regulations, such as parking requirements, that drive up costs for developers. Egge disparages those who oppose the invasion of their neighborhoods with towering, out-of-scale apartment and condo monstrosities. He calls these citizens ‘NIMBY disbelievers’ who fail to understand that Bozeman’s high housing costs can be remedied by the simple law of supply and demand.”

Former Bozeman mayor and city commissioner Steve Kirchhoff remembers how Gianforte in 1997, long before he was a Congressman and governor, joined neighbors and sought, as a self interested citizen, to prevent a neighboring landowner from exercising his right to put in a large and dense residential subdivision near his home off Manley Road along the East Gallatin River. It was a bold expression of not-in-my-backyard thinking. When Gianforte failed to prevail, he told Gail Schontzler, reporter for the Bozeman Daily Chronicle: “There’s 10 houses on Manley Road now; this permits 290 … on what is essentially a swamp. This did not factor in our concerns [presented to the city]. It’s completely inconsistent with the surrounding property.”

These days, the urban and rural land use policies Gianforte champions seem to allow for development that also isn’t consistent with the desires of neighbors and surrounding properties nor respectful of sensitive environments.

Kirchoff notes how “Gianforte’s hypocrisy” didn’t stop with his own situational NIMBYism.

The governor claims to be a champion for affordable housing, but what happens if developers don’t want to build it? In 2021, Gianforte signed a bill banning the cities of Bozeman and Whitefish from implementing inclusionary zoning that requires developers to create affordable housing before their projects can win approval. The governor claims he is a reformer yet the net effort of the Montana Land Use Planning Act he signed into law in 2023 is to radically weaken scrutiny and oversight of proposed developments. It streamlines permitting for commercial and residential development by eliminating local design review by volunteer boards.

Gianforte’s support of unchecked growth stands in contrast to the sentiments of Montanans, as measured in ongoing surveys from the University of Montana. Three quarters of respondents say lack of affordable housing is a serious problem. At the same time, about three of every five Montanans in 2024 said the rate of growth and development in their local community is happening too fast. The number of citizens who think sprawl spreading across farms and open lands is a serious problem is rising, too, and they say it is changing the character of their state for the worse.  

Independent and government planners I spoke with suggest that, in the name of giving landowners and developers wider latitude to build more homes allegedly to fix affordable housing, Gianforte’s policies represent a new accelerant for rural sprawl, which is already problematic, and will only hasten the loss the western mountain valleys of more wildlife habitat, open space and create more worries about water pumping, individual wells drying up and a future with more failing individual septic systems.

Read about a landmark victory in Broadwater County notched by a group, Upper Missouri Waterkeeper, that challenged government approval of a subdivision allowing developers/homeowners to pump water without first identifying its source, level of abundance, and impacts of aggregate water use. This is mentioned to illustrate the kinds of problems occurring with recent gutting of regulatory oversight.

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The citizen revolt in Bozeman has done nothing to chasten developers, at least so far. An illustration of how emboldened some have become, a realtor and owner of an architectural design firm in Bozeman, who is pushing to build a controversial boutique hotel downtown, chastised local citizenry. He took aim at those who have been tenaciously watchdogging the city commission, the city planning staff, and the Community Development Board (comprised mostly of people in the development industry) who have backed dramatic changes in local residential zoning. 

Here, verbatim, is the public statement made recently by real estate developer Matt Paine, who is aiming to erect a boutique hotel in close proximity to Bozeman Creek which flows through downtown. He is among other developers seeking relaxed height restrictions on downtown structures. He made the following comment on November 3, 2025 before the Bozeman Community Development Board and may have found a sympathetic ear in Mark Egge. Paine’s irreverent remarks speak for themselves but it’s pertinent to mention that, as a white male himself, he resorted to playing the race card, directed ageist scorn at elderly citizens and chastised neighborhood advocates for showing up to meetings.

“We have roughly 60,000 residents within the city limits of Bozeman. And we have 50 of those [neighborhood advocates] show up here time and time again trying to hijack the agenda, trying to enforce their own opinion on the citizenry,” Paine declared. “Most Bozemanites are busy working around the clock, trying to make their mortgage payments, trying to take their kids to soccer tournaments on the weekend, and maybe go skiing every now and then. I think 850 comments, the majority of which were written by a select few, is exactly one percent of the citizens. That goes to show how involved the majority of our citizens are with this process, how indifferent actually they are, for better or worse. But we have 50, mostly old retired white people, the most privileged contingent of Bozeman residents showing up here time and time again. The very definition of privilege. I better be careful here; I am just a few years away from 50 myself. We can count a handful of people below 50 here. These are people established in the neighborhoods and they will never be happy until we have absolutely zero growth and Bozeman is restored to the day they fell in love with it. I too live in downtown Bozeman. Nobody loves change. Everyone is resistant to it as much as anyone else. But the reality is it is here. The UDC (unified development code] as it is today is a disaster and this one is imperfect, I won’t argue with that. And a lot of the imperfection comes from change foisted onto it by these hobby planners, hobby architects that are hanging out at home and in coffee shops and trying to come up with these comments making everything worse. I’m not just talking about the financial implications of this but also the planning implications, the construction and the complications that are very difficult to express.”

There is much inaccuracy to unpack in what Mr. Paine said, according to those who witnessed it firsthand, and apparently also a lack of awareness with his own irony, relating to the fact that it’s not citizens who stand accused of hijacking the city agenda but developers and members of libertarian think-tanks. Paine stands to benefit financially from the changes in code he is promoting, including the rescinding of former height restrictions on downtown buildings.

A recording of his remarks is now in wide circulation and they’ve only fueled populist ire. Paine attempts to minimize the presence of 50 neighborhood advocates consistently attending multi-hour meetings and seems to poo pooh the importance of 850 public comments (which is actually significant) submitted by citizens insisting that the city be held to account. In addition, his suggestion that citizens aren’t showing up in mass to meetings because they are “indifferent” has no basis. A better term is that many citizens feel not listened to and they are exhausted.

In fact, advocates who were at that meeting say most residents not in attendance assumed their elected officials would vigorously defend Bozeman’s character. It’s safe to say that most Bozeman residents, who don’t subscribe to the local newspaper and aren’t reached through the city’s poor community outreach efforts, weren’t aware of pushes to allow buildings to be 20 percent higher.

Paine points to community advocates as allegedly being “the very definition of privilege,” but what is privilege? One wonders: how would he categorize his desired clientele who will be frequenting his self-described “boutique hotel” or, more broadly, how would he describe the economic level of residents buying or renting “luxury apartments” built by other developers?

Paine delivered his blistering remarks right after Marcia Kaveney of the Bozeman Tree Coalition spoke about nature protection not being adequately made a priority in Bozeman’s revised code, and Sweeney spoke about how neighborhood concerns were ignored. You can listen to their comments leading up to Paine’s remarks in sequence by clicking here. They begin at the one-hour, 24-minute mark.

As developers and architecture firms champion zoning that allows multi-story luxury apartments to invade neighborhoods and they seek to clear away height restrictions downtown, old guard residents of Bozeman are standing in opposition. They consider the relentless pushes of developers to be brash and disrespectful of the legacy of their beloved downtown.

Pushing back, they say rescinding the height restrictions represents a point of no return that will, if allowed to proceed, destroy the sense of scale that made the downtown Main Street area aesthetically appealing. And, they note, that by allowing structures to block views of the Bridger Mountains, it degrades Bozeman’s sense of place and will, in no way, create more affordable housing. In a recent 4-1 vote, however, just one Bozeman City Commissioner, Jennifer Madgic, a professional planner, dissented.

During the summer of 2025, Madgic expressed sympathy for neighborhoods facing one battle after another. “I think it’s clear people in established neighborhoods don’t want dramatic change, and I don’t blame them, based on recent examples of considerable change on the north side. Some amount of that change can be good, and that’s the needle we’re having to thread,” she told a Bozeman Daily Chronicle reporter.

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The height restriction controversy, however, isn’t about threading a needle. It’s a test of the values the City Commission claims to represent and history will remember the way each commissioner voted. In a guest column that appeared in the Bozeman Daily Chronicle, Michelle Osman, who became interim chair of the Better Bozeman Coalition after Sweeney resigned before assuming office, put the move the City Commission on height restrictions in context. “Other cities such as Charleston, S.C., Burlington, Vt., Boulder, Colo., Old Town Alexandria, Va., Jackson, Wyo., Aspen, Colo., and many others protect their historic districts with much lower height limits ranging from 30 to 50 feet,” Osman wrote. “The Bozeman City Commission’s decision to increase heights to 90 feet is two or three times the height allowed in these other historic districts. These increased building heights could be further increased by another two stories (30 feet) under the city’s affordable housing incentives resulting in 9- to 11-story buildings 120 feet tall.”

Telling is that two of the owners of the two tallest buildings that serve as bookends in traditional downtown Bozeman —the Baxter Hotel on the western side of Main Street and the Bozeman Hotel on the eastern edge— sided with historic preservationists and neighborhood advocates. Read their comments submitted to the city on height restrictions at the end of this story. Their entity, called the Bozeman Hotel Owner’s Association, also sued the city after the commission last summer gave approval for Paine’s six story boutique hotel project after it earlier had been rejected.

Madgic and outgoing Mayor Terry Cunningham were the two who voted against approving Paine’s boutique hotel in its second attempt at approval because they believed its presence intruded too closely upon Bozeman Creek, itself the focus of ongoing restoration efforts. During the summer of 2025, Cunningham made this public statement about the city’s commitment to revive the fortunes of Bozeman Creek after a century of abuse. “In the last 200 years, we have tried to change its wild nature,” Cunningham said. “We have tried to bring it to heel. We have tried to make it our servant, and we have tried to hide it away. Now’s the time when we say enough. That was then, this is now, and we have a new vision for this creek.”

So it’s a least ironic that Cunningham’s colleagues on the city commission approved a project that seems to contradict the city’s alleged promise to be a better protector against the onslaught of development. Many citizens are wondering whether the city can be trusted to protect the historic charm of downtown, of beloved historic neighborhoods and natural landscapes under constant relentless pressure.

In the interview with Sweeney before she took office, she offered a rebuttal to Paine’s characterization of advocates. “There is a culture within the organization of the City of Bozeman—and amongst the paid and unpaid satellite participants that influence policy— that anything that hinders growth and development is inherently bad,” she said. “But I don’t believe that is the position of the vast majority of Bozeman residents. We are constantly confronted with the accusation that we don’t want anything to change, that we want to put everything under glass or encase it in amber. Of course, that’s false and the truth is much more nuanced.”

What more is behind the backlash to the lack of coherent growth policies in the city and county? Citizens of Greater Bozeman have watched as stretches of urban forests, home to wildlife and shade, have been razed by developers to create more spec homes with little scrutiny coming from the city planning departments. (This served as a spark for some citizens creating a grassroots group called The Bozeman Tree Coalition).

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Locals also point to new housing being built inside sensitive stream corridors prone to flooding. They note how multi-story structures have soared next to century old homes, overshadowing them and literally blocking sunshine from reaching their backyards where formerly residents grew vegetables plants and enjoyed solace without having people on elevated patios hovering over them.

They cite the fact that the City of Bozeman’s Historic Preservation Advisory Board, comprised of citizens who championed the city’s historic integrity, has had its influence diminished because developers didn’t want it to have a watchdog function. And citizens highlight how the recently created Community Development Board has emerged, in contrast to the weakened Historic Preservation Advisory Board, as being allowed to hold more sway in promoting the agendas of developers.

Many longtime residents of Bozeman are today becoming active in pushing back and challenging the claim that destroying Bozeman’s sense of place is a necessary sacrifice in order to achieve better socio-economic parity. Many are concerned about the problem of high real estate and rents but they say enabling the free market to undo codes has not made the problem better, but far worse, and it has left devoted citizens, who over decades have given much back to the town through civic engagement, feeling angry and alienated.

One of those citizens is Sweeney, a resident of the unpretentious southwest side. She and her family have roots in Bozeman going back to its creation in the 1860s. A jewelry maker by profession—she owns Bernadette’s Handmade Jewelry— Sweeney founded a grassroots group called the Better Bozeman Coalition in response to a growing groundswell of citizens who say the city has done a poor job of communicating with citizens, has in some cases treated their concerns with hostility, and often sides with developers in decisions claiming local codes are insufficient to say no to their sometimes controversial proposals.

After she won a seat on the city commission—read her explanation for running—she resigned from that organization but the values BBC defends are core as serves on the five-member commission. There’s never been anyone like her but behind her is widespread support from longtime Bozeman residents who party identities stretch across the spectrum. 

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Read the Yellowstonian interview with Bozeman City Commissioner Alison Sweeney:

Below is a document submitted to the City of Bozeman voicing opposition to dramatically raise height restrictions on downtown buildings in the historic district.