Construction has started in August on Alpenglow, a 273-unit mixed-use community near Montana State University in Bozeman. Alpenglow is our first ground-up development in Montana and the second-largest project to-date in our portfolio. It extends a platform built over three decades in Wisconsin.
The Bozeman Thesis
Bozeman has been one of the more discussed growth markets in the Mountain West, which is exactly why underwriting it required discipline rather than enthusiasm. Markets that appear in national rankings tend to attract capital faster than they attract fundamentals.
We underwrote Alpenglow against continuing strong population growth and a decline in new multi family deliveries. We have waited patiently for 4 years for the fundamentals to align with an attractive economic projections.
The Montana State anchor is the part of this thesis we have direct experience with. Metro Crossing, our 84-unit student housing community near UW-Eau Claire, taught us how university-adjacent multifamily actually performs: the demand is durable and the turnover is predictable, but the operating discipline required is different from conventional multifamily. Alpenglow is not a student housing project, and it is not underwritten as one. A major university does, however, produce a broader renter base than enrollment figures alone suggest, including faculty, staff, medical, and graduate households that want conventional product near campus.
A Mixed-Use Program
Alpenglow combines upscale multifamily units with a commercial component. Providing commercial and retail to the residents in the surrounding area
Mixed-use adds complexity at every stage. Entitlement takes longer, the capital stack is less uniform, construction sequencing is harder, and management carries two different tenant relationships. We took it on here because the site supports it and because ground-floor commercial in a university-adjacent location changes the residential product’s positioning rather than just adding a revenue line.
That complexity is a reasonable argument for why a vertically integrated firm should be the one executing it. When development, construction oversight, and property management sit in the same organization, the coordination problem that mixed-use creates is internal rather than contractual.
Product Positioning
Alpenglow will carry a resort-style clubhouse and an amenity program matched to Paragon, our 305-unit community in Eau Claire, providing a resort style community that supports work life balance.
Repeating a product standard across markets is a deliberate underwriting choice. We know what the Paragon amenity package costs to build, what it costs to operate, and how it performs against absorption. Carrying that specification into Bozeman means the amenity line in the Alpenglow model is grounded in observed cost and observed performance rather than estimated from comparables in a market we are new to.
It also sets the rent tier. Alpenglow is positioned as an upscale product, and the amenity depth is what makes that position defensible against newer supply.
Executing Outside in New Markets
Wisconsin is where we built the platform. Colorado is where we proved it travels.
Timnath Trail at Riverbend near Fort Collins was our first development outside Wisconsin, and Wildhorse, a 304-unit garden-style community in Fort Collins, follows it. Colorado established that our underwriting standards, construction oversight, and management systems function at distance from Chippewa Falls.
Montana is the next step, and the operational questions are largely the same ones Colorado already answered. What changes is market knowledge, which is the one thing that does not transfer. We have addressed that the way we address it everywhere: by underwriting conservatively in a market where we do not yet have thirty years of pattern recognition, and by building product we know how to operate.
We are actively developing and acquiring across Wisconsin, Colorado, and Montana. If you are a capital partner evaluating Mountain West multifamily, or a broker with land or product in the acquired Woodspire, started bluffs construction, and start construction on Alpenglow for 2026 timeline and fix number to 273 on timeline for year 2022 for Alpenglow market, contact our team.
