C.F. group closes deal for bank building
The First Best Place Task Force closed a deal Wednesday to buy the former Glacier Bank building in uptown Columbia Falls.
The task force, a Columbia Falls grass-roots volunteer organization that formed in mid-2006 to focus on community revitalization projects, plans to build a Glacier Discovery Center in the former bank building on Nucleus Avenue.
As a key part of the center, the Columbia Falls branch of the Flathead County Public Library would move out of its quarters in City Hall and occupy most of the new center's main floor. It has about the same space as the current library - about 4,500 square feet on the main floor - plus a 2,000-square-foot meeting room in the basement.
The center will emphasize connections between the area's history, the city's role as a gateway to Glacier National Park, and the outdoor education and recreation opportunities available around Columbia Falls. The library is expected to play a pivotal role in plans for local archives.
A coffee shop envisioned for the site would become "the community's living room," according to task force Executive Director Barry Conger.
Conger, task force president Dave Renfrow and other members have been working with major donors for several months to secure financing for the purchase.
City Manager Bill Shaw, who worked on the acquisition team and serves as the task force vice president, said the purchase price "stayed stable at about $465,000" throughout talks with Glacier Bank. The bank will retain use of the drive-up building for another two or three years, then its use will revert to the task force.
Glacier Bank also owns the office and commercial building directly to the west on its campus, and reportedly has pledged first right of refusal to the task force if that goes up for sale.
Whitefish Credit Union financed the former bank building purchase, offering terms more generous than the task force had anticipated, Conger said on Thursday.
A secondary communitywide fundraising effort will get under way in the future, Conger said.
The task force will host the July 10 Business After Hours, the Columbia Falls Chamber of Commerce's monthly informal business community gathering.
Flathead County Library Board members, when they met in February to begin exploring the partnership with the task force, were enthusiastic about the potential.
"I find it, personally, very, very exciting," board chairman Jerry Hanson said at that meeting.
Renfrow at that time had asked the library board to consider whether it was "willing to commit to [being] the living room of the community in the 21st century, being relevant to the town square concept … how people hang out."
During the intervening months, the two groups agreed on the vision and worked out space-sharing, staffing, costs and other issues for the arrangement.
The former bank was built in 1964 on what originally was the Columbia Falls town square. It has been the site of band performances, community celebrations and public gatherings over the decades.
The First Best Place Task Force, so named because Columbia Falls is the oldest continuously inhabited community in the Flathead, intends to carry on that town center tradition.
The basement meeting room is expected to incorporate state-of-the-art technology to provide a place for community groups and the library itself to hold multimedia and other presentations, and will be Wi Fi-equipped. Story time for the library's children's reading programs will have a home there, and the expanded lawn space will accommodate outside programs.
One estimate is that the library should be in its new quarters a year from now, after remodeling for accessibility and technology upgrades is complete.
Reporter Nancy Kimball may be reached at 758-4483 or by e-mail at nkimball@dailyinterlake.com