Apgar parking expansion delayed

Glacier National Park will delay expanding the parking lot at the Apgar Transit Center near the Park’s west entrance. The original time frame for construction was this fall and next spring, but the Park will move that back to 2014, Park spokesperson Denise Germann said last week.

Germann said the Park, facing continuing work on the Going-to-the-Sun Road reconstruction project, decided the parking expansion was a lower priority project.

The Apgar plan also calls for moving visitor center services into the transit center building. That project, too, will be delayed until 2014.

The parking lot expansion would create 190 to 195 parking spaces and 21 RV spaces. The cost of the expansion is estimated at $500,000 and would be paid for through the Federal Highway Administration’s lands program.

About 1.2 acres of land will be disturbed by the parking lot project. The expansion is not expected to have any long-term impacts on grizzly bears or other endangered species, but a unique plant — the velvet-leafed huckleberry — grows in the area. Any of the plants found in the construction zone will be moved and transplanted before construction begins.