BOZEMAN — Tuesday night, the Bozeman City Commission voted in favor of upholding approval of site plans for the Guthrie, a controversial housing project planned for midtown Bozeman.
The decision followed the commission's postponing a decision during its April 1 meeting, where debate over the site plan’s approval lasted more than six hours.
Plans for the Guthrie were initially denied in July 2024. Subsequently, the project’s developer, HomeBase Partners, returned to the city with a scaled-down proposal for the Guthrie that was approved in January 2025.
Area residents appealed the city’s approval of the plans, claiming the conditional approval was arbitrary and that the plans do not follow the guidelines of Bozeman’s neighborhood conservation overlay district (NCOD).
The vote was 4-1 in favor of upholding the approval, with Commissioner Douglas Fischer casting the lone dissenting vote.
Fischer wanted some amendments to the site plan, but the rest of the commission believed that would be too long and difficult a process, especially given that the plans have already changed drastically since they were first submitted. Among those changes are fewer floors and nearly 20% fewer units, with a promise to use brick and other architecture that matches the neighborhood.
The commission held that all traffic, open space, sewer, safety, and related assessments pointed to the Guthrie being within code.
