Mission West brings Brownfields redevelopment options to Polson City Commission

Karl Sutton presented Mission West’s Brownfields Assessment Program to the Polson City Commission on Monday, June 15, outlining how idle industrial properties across western Montana could be returned to productive use for housing, parks, and tourism.

Brownfields are properties where redevelopment is complicated by real or perceived contamination, often left behind by past gas stations, railroads, lumber mills, and mining operations. These sites carry environmental risk and represent lost economic opportunity for the communities around them.

“We want to help get those properties unstuck,” Sutton told the commission.

Funded in late 2025, the program works in three phases: uncovering a property’s history, conducting an environmental assessment, and planning cleanup and reuse. The goal is to get stakeholders to the table and connect owners, developers, and public partners with the financing needed to move a site forward. Sutton pointed to Missoula’s Montana Rail Link Park, a former mill site redeveloped through the Brownfields process and a public-private partnership, as an example of what is possible.

Closer to home, the former U.S. Plywood plant on Montana Rail Link property along Seventh Avenue in Polson stands out as a dormant mill site that could help address the valley’s housing shortage. Sutton also discussed the Morehead Orchards property, donated to the city for use as a park, where a Community Development Block Grant could fund an initial assessment of possible contaminants from past agricultural use.

Sutton said Mission West’s next step is to establish a revolving loan fund to help finance cleanup, and that the program will pursue additional funding through the Montana DEQ Brownfields Program and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as more potential projects come together.

Landowners and communities interested in the program can contact our Brownfields program manager to talk through a property. There is no cost and no obligation to start the conversation.

Read the full story by Emily Messer in the Leader-Advertiser: Is idle industrial land an option?