A plan to add a helicopter landing pad southwest of McCall is on ice — just days after it was appealed.
AB West Mountain Holdings hoped to build the pad, as well as a bunkhouse, officer, and hangar, on a 261-acre ranch property on West Mountain Rd., west of Lake Fork.
The Valley Co. Commission OK’ed the bunkhouse and office – but said no to the helicopter and hangar. They formally denied a conditional use permit for the aviation piece of the application earlier this fall.
AB West Mountain is owned by Boise developer Tommy Ahlquist and Clearwater Analytics Founder Michael Boren.
Ahlquist told BoiseDev Friday that they’ve decided to pull the appeal. Valley Co. was set to hold a public hearing on it on December 18th of this month.
The project
The application called for a 3,200-square-foot two-story building that would house a ranch office, storage, and a four-bedroom dormitory for temporary ranch employees and guests. Ahlquist said the property is an active cattle ranch.
The public hearing on the helicopter pad in front of the Valey Co. Commission in October got heated.
All seven residents who testified, except one who was undecided, were against this development, citing problems such as noise concerns, damaging property values, and concerns for wildlife.
The application said that flight access would be no more than three times a month, but Ahlquist & Boren had offered up the helipad for emergency uses, including fire and emergency personnel.
The application called this and the Life Flight accessibility a benefit to the neighbors. James Fronk, who represented AB West Mountain, noted Ahlquist had a heart attack on his ranch and spoke about how having emergency services closer would be useful. But those who testified seemed to disagree and one person even called Ahlquist a “nuisance to his neighbors.”
Firey testimony
One neighbor gave heated testimony to that element.
“Life Flight. Let’s use his example here. What a joke. For example, if someone was shot on West Mountain Road and is laying there bleeding to death, is Tommy Ahlquist going to go ‘thank god we’ve got this helicopter pad here?’ No. the proper thing to do is call 911, McCall fire, McCall ambulance will respond, they’ll take that person to St. Luke’s where there’s an ER, and then they will take the person if he needs a Life Flight out to McCall Airport which is a mile away,” Valley County resident Steve Holder said. “You can’t tell me Ahlquist here had a heart attack and lied there didn’t go to the hospital… All he’s trying to do is put lipstick on a pig.”
When it was time for Ahlquist to address the commission and crowd, he said some of the half dozen people weren’t truthful.
“I don’t think I’m here to rebut the dozens of lies that were just told,” he said.
He explained that he believed the landing pad would be helpful in emergency situations.
“I was an ER doctor for 18 years. I believe we live in the greatest country in the history of the planet, and I believe we live in Idaho and I believe personal property rights matter here,” Ahlquist said. “…The airport authority actually said that having a place to land in an emergency, especially during inclement weather conditions… would be helpful. But if that is not helpful to the county and you don’t want to do that, that’s fine. We’re just looking for ways to make this usable by others.”
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County Commissioner Gary Swain, in moving to deny the helipad, said rights of varying parties should be balanced.
“Well, as Mr. Alquist said, I too believe in private property rights. But it can’t come at the cost of taking somebody else’s right away…I don’t have a problem with the overall idea of his land use change. I do have a problem with the heliport. At the minimum, we should do a noise study on this specific helicopter,” Swain said.
Boren’s aviation history
The neighbors who testified also raised Boren’s tangle with neighbors and officials near Stanely over a landing strip on property he owns there.
Idaho News 6 reported that Boren, who owns Hell Roaring Ranch in Stanley, was at a crossroads with residents about landing his aircraft on his private property in 2021. The Custer County Planning and Zoning Commission approved Borens’ request for a conditional use permit to use land on his ranch as an airstrip in May of that year. People opposed said he was using the land as an airstrip prior to getting the proper permits.
The Idaho Mountain Express reported earlier this spring that Boren was appealing a defamation case stemming from the airstrip to the Idaho Supreme Court.
Some of the neighbors testified that Boren had flown his helicopter over the area that day. Ahlquist said that wasn’t true, and Boren was out of town.
“It’s really convenient for people that move here from out of state to tell us how we should live, and how we should fly our helicopters, to tell us how we should run our lives and use our property,’ Ahlquist said. “It’s an active cattle ranch in Valley County. And for God’s sake, at some point, this country, this state, this county has got to start thinking about our residents instead of having people come in here and tell us how to live our lives and how to use our property.”
