Teton commissioners to vote on NMWA PUD expansion at 2820 Rungius Road

Teton County’s Board of County Commissioners is scheduled to decide March 3 on a Planned Unit Development (PUD) amendment for the National Museum of Wildlife Art at 2820 Rungius Road, allowing a major building addition and associated site work. The request (PUD2025-0002) would increase the museum’s above-grade floor area by about 23,243 square feet, plus a 11,270-square-foot basement that wouldn’t count toward floor-area totals, and add roughly 27,363 square feet of new site development. See the staff packet: Planning Commission Staff Report Packet.

County planning staff say the expansion is intended to improve galleries, education and multipurpose space, and collections storage, and isn’t expected to increase staffing or visitation. The staff report also notes the site has more parking than typical national comparators for a museum of this size, with 198 spaces plus three service spaces, partly because a planned U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service sleigh-ride facility approved in the original 1993 PUD was never built. The item appears as New Business #2 on the March 3 agenda: Board Meeting Agenda.

The property is a 69-acre parcel in the Scenic Resources Overlay and mid/high tiers of the Natural Resources Overlay, and staff say the addition is clustered within already-developed areas in the mid-tier (with a small turnaround expansion in high-tier on an already graded slope). Staff also cite a conservation easement on about 34 acres held by the Jackson Hole Land Trust. At its Feb. 9 hearing, the Planning Commission voted 3–1 to recommend approval, with the dissent focused on Scenic Resources Overlay concerns that staff argued are exempt for expansions of pre-1994 structures.