If you're closing on a home near downtown Columbia Falls this month, you're moving in mid-project. Since March, crews have had stretches of Fourth Avenue West and Seventh Street West closed off for the city's $9.4 million Gateway to Glacier construction, tearing up roadway, replacing the water main underneath it, and pouring new sidewalks and shared-use paths. That work pauses for winter and picks up again next spring for a second construction season that doesn't wrap up until September 2027. The city has already posted the closure schedule, and it's worth reading before you tour a house on that corridor, not after you've made an offer.
That's not a reason to avoid Columbia Falls. It's a reason to understand what's actually driving its market right now, because the same forces reshaping downtown are also reshaping the math behind the town's home prices.
The Puzzle Buyers Run Into
Here's what trips people up when they start comparing Flathead Valley towns on paper: Columbia Falls, the smaller town with fewer restaurants and no downtown grocery anchor to speak of, has been pricing above Kalispell, the valley's commercial hub. According to full-year 2025 data compiled by the Northwest Montana Association of Realtors and reported by the Daily Inter Lake in January, Columbia Falls posted a median single-family sale price of $600,000 for the year. Kalispell came in at $560,000.
That gap held into 2026. Redfin's trailing three-month figure through August 2026 put Columbia Falls' median sale price at $498,000, up 15.9 percent from the same stretch the year before. That's a different slice of the data than the annual NWMAR number, since it covers every home type over a rolling window rather than single-family homes over a full year, but the trend line says the same thing: this isn't a market where the premium has cracked yet.
| Columbia Falls | Kalispell | |
|---|---|---|
| Median single-family sale price, 2025 | $600,000 | $560,000 |
| Distance to Glacier's west entrance | 14 miles | 32 miles |
Fourteen Miles Explains Part of It
The distance gap is real and it isn't small. Columbia Falls sits 14 miles from the west entrance to Glacier National Park. Kalispell sits 32. For buyers who want to be close to the park, or who are betting on Glacier's tourism economy for rental income or long-term appeal, that difference gets priced in. It's the kind of premium that shows up consistently across mountain-adjacent towns nationwide: proximity to a defining natural feature outbids raw population size or amenity count almost every time.
Two Vacant Lots Explain the Rest
Proximity alone doesn't account for the whole gap. The other half is supply, and Columbia Falls has had almost none of it. As of 2024, the city had only two vacant multi-family lots within its limits. That's not a typo. Two. Meanwhile Kalispell absorbed a wave of new apartment construction, including the 224-unit Parkline Towers that came online in 2025. Columbia Falls simply didn't have anywhere for that kind of supply to land, so steady demand from workers and buyers tied to the Glacier corridor kept competing for the same small pool of listings.
Scarcity like that doesn't resolve itself quietly. It resolves through a specific project, on a specific parcel, and Columbia Falls just got one.
The Development That's About to Test That Scarcity
In June 2026, the Columbia Falls City Council approved Teakettle Heights, a 421-unit subdivision from developer Mick Ruis, the largest single subdivision the city has ever approved. The plan calls for 125 single-family detached lots, 56 single-family townhouse sublots, and 240 multi-family apartment units spread across 78 acres, with roughly a third of the property set aside as parks and open space. Construction is already underway. When Gov. Greg Gianforte and EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin toured the site on September 17, they walked past Ruis Construction crews already working the ground.
This is the project that could finally move the needle on Columbia Falls' inventory problem. It's also sitting on land with a longer story attached to it.
It Sits on Land With a Longer Story
Teakettle Heights is being built on part of the former Columbia Falls Aluminum Company property, which the EPA designated a Superfund site back in 2016. That fact alone makes some buyers nervous, and it's a fair question to ask. Here's what the record actually shows: the EPA evaluated the specific 78-acre Teakettle Heights parcel as part of its Baseline Human Health Risk Assessment and determined it did not require remediation. During the September 17 site tour, EPA project manager Allie Archer addressed the concern directly.
"The whole 2,000 acres was sampled and would have been included in any cleanup measures that were required. There was none required for where that Teakettle Heights redevelopment is going, so it's free to be redeveloped and reused."
That said, the broader Superfund boundary is still active. On August 31, 2026, the EPA and Montana Department of Environmental Quality filed a proposed consent decree with the U.S. District Court in Missoula, under which CFAC's parent company, Glencore, has agreed to pay roughly $57.6 million to clean up decades of contamination from the site, including cyanide and fluoride leaching from old smelter waste. Physical cleanup work could start as early as late 2026 or 2027 and is expected to take several years. Because of the groundwater concerns tied to that broader cleanup, Teakettle Heights will connect to city water rather than draw from wells on-site, a detail worth knowing if you're evaluating anything near that corridor.
None of this means the neighborhood is unsafe. It means the diligence question for a buyer isn't "is this a Superfund site," it's "which specific parcel am I buying, and has that parcel been characterized and cleared." Those are two different questions with two different answers, and a good local agent should be able to walk you through both before you write an offer.
More Supply Is Already in the Pipeline
Teakettle Heights isn't the only project chipping away at Columbia Falls' scarcity problem. A January 2026 Daily Inter Lake report noted a separate developer proposing 175 single-family homes, with another planning 40 apartments elsewhere in the city. Habitat Flathead also broke ground this spring on six homes along Railroad Street and Fourth Avenue East North, built on land the city donated to the Northwest Montana Community Land Trust. Those homes are structured to stay permanently affordable through the land trust model, a different mechanism than market-rate inventory but still real supply hitting a town that had almost none of it two years ago.
Add it up and Columbia Falls goes from a city with two vacant multi-family lots to one absorbing a pipeline of more than 600 new units within a few years.
What This Means If You're Comparing Columbia Falls to Kalispell
If you're weighing these two towns right now, the honest read is this: the premium that's kept Columbia Falls above Kalispell is built on a scarcity condition that's actively being dismantled, but not on a timeline that helps anyone shopping this fall. Teakettle Heights broke ground in September 2026. Subdivisions of that size typically deliver in phases over several years, not all at once, and the broader Superfund cleanup running alongside it stretches into 2027 and beyond. The Gateway to Glacier construction adds its own near-term friction for downtown-adjacent buyers through September 2027.
For a buyer closing this year, that means the current pricing environment, tight and still climbing per the 2026 trailing data, is likely to hold for at least the next construction season or two. For a buyer with more flexibility, watching how Teakettle Heights' early phases price out over the next 18 to 24 months will tell you more about where Columbia Falls is headed than any single month's median.
A Few Questions Worth Asking Before You Write an Offer
Does buying near Teakettle Heights mean buying on a Superfund site? It means buying within the Superfund boundary, but not necessarily on land that required remediation. The 78-acre Teakettle Heights parcel itself was sampled and cleared. Ask specifically which parcel you're considering and whether it falls inside or outside the characterized, cleared portion of the property.
How long will Gateway to Glacier construction affect downtown access? Through September 2027. This year's work covers Fourth Avenue West and Seventh Street West, with closures posted through late October before winter pause. A second construction season follows in 2027.
Is Columbia Falls still pricier than Kalispell right now? Based on 2025 full-year data and the trailing figures through August 2026, yes. Whether that holds once Teakettle Heights and the other proposed projects reach the market is the question worth revisiting every few months rather than assuming settled.
If you're trying to figure out where your search actually fits between Columbia Falls, Kalispell, and everywhere in between, that's exactly the kind of question worth talking through before you start touring. Let's Connect and I'll walk you through what these projects mean for your specific price range and timeline.
