What now?

By JESSICA MAYRER Chronicle staff writer

Once touted as a vision of smart growth, the 1,200-unit Story Mill project slated to be built north of downtown Bozeman appears stalled as American Bank last month filed foreclosure proceedings against project manager Blue Sky Development, citing $8.6 million in outstanding loans.

ERIK PETERSEN/CHRONICLE Bruce Olson, who has lived in the Bridger View Trailer Park since 1973, wonders aloud on his porch Monday afternoon what he will do if forced to leave his home without the buyout most of his neighbors received. Go Build and Blue Sky Development paid many of the former trailer park tenants to move, making way for the Story Mill project. Olson and a handful of others are still living in the trailer park, waiting for word on what will happen next. “We are requesting a foreclosure sale of the property,” American Bank attorney Bill Lamdin, from Billings-based Crowley Fleck PLLP, said Monday.

American Bank lists Blue Sky principal, Matthew Crocker, his mother and Yellowstone Club owner, Edra Blixseth, and several other stakeholders in the lawsuit. The proceeding, filed just one month after the Yellowstone Club declared bankruptcy, presents the latest financial challenge for the Blixseth family.

And as Story Mill stalls, a handful of trailer park residents who have yet to receive promised buyout checks from Blue Sky are caught in the middle.

Bruce Olson has lived here since 1973. No one picks up the garbage or plows the roads anymore, he said. And the streetlights don’t work. But his $8,700 buyout check has yet to arrive. And so, the 59 year old who’s on disability, doesn’t know what to do next.

“They never have given me a date,” Olson said. “I’ve got a knot in my stomach, wondering.”

Several calls to Blue Sky last week and again Monday went unreturned, but in a written statement released in October, the developer said all but seven residents from the 92-unit park had yet to be paid, and they would be compensated as soon as possible.

Representatives from Blue Sky told Olson a couple of months ago, he said, that they would likely pay him after the holidays.

“That was the last I heard of them,” Olson said.

Since then, he called the developer once, asking if they would plow the road. They never called him back, he said.

And so, the day after Christmas, when his neighbor Terry Fukado woke to piles of fresh snow, he started shoveling.

“I thought, ‘I don’t think that they’re going to plow me out,” Fukado said. “I shoveled it all the way to the highway.”

Fukado is waiting on a check for just over $8,000. He moved much of his furniture out months ago when Blue Sky representatives told him they had to be out. And so, his TV sits atop a milk crate and boxes sit half packed on the floor. He likes living here, though, because it’s close the Meadow Gold Dairy, where he works, Fukado said.

“I’ve just been playing it week-to-week,” he said.

But still he wonders what happens next.

“Let’s say they do file bankruptcy, do they have to buy me out?” he asked.

In addition to the foreclosure filing, two liens against Blue Sky have been filed by project partners Hyalite Engineers and green development company Kath Williams + Associates, totaling more than $100,000.

Go Build and Blue Sky Development filed for and were granted an extension from the city of Bozeman in October. They now have until June to submit their final project plan, said Bozeman’s Assistant Planning Director, Chris Saunders.

“From the city’s standpoint, the project is not officially dead,” Saunders said. “We’re willing to work with Go Build or its successors.”

Typically, an uncontested foreclosure proceeding could take as long as six months to resolve, Lamdin said. But it’s early to tell what will happen to the property.

For now the shelves inside Olson’s trailer remain filled with books and DVDs. A massive wood-paneled fish tank sits below a model ship, both built by Olson.

He used to like living here, he said.

“I know it’s not a palatial estate, but it was a nice place to live,” he said.

And now, if Olson has to pay out of pocket to move his trailer, he said, he’ll have nothing left. And so, he’s waiting to see what comes next.

“It sure would be nice to know what’s going on,” Olson said.

Jessica Mayrer can be reached at jmayrer@dailychronicle.com 582-2635.

Olson is on disability

His friends at Pandas gas station have since started plowing as a favor to Olson, he said.

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