Station 8 retail venture ready to roll

Old rail station being converted to shops in Columbia Falls

Columbia Falls is just two weeks from its next step on the path to being a destination antiques shopping center.

That's one way Colette and Peter Gross look at their venture of renovating the city's century-old train depot. They also see their new business as a nice mesh of the old with the new - and a great shopping opportunity for Columbia Falls.

The Shops at Station 8 is what they're calling the newest life being given to Linc's Automotive.

Years ago Linc France converted the landmark white depot along U.S. 2 just east of Nucleus Avenue into a car repair shop. He remodeled the east end of the old depot into his own cozy home. After he died in August 2005, his family decided it was time to sell the place.

Not long after, Colette Gross started hatching an idea for a new retail space and began the hunt for a location. Her vision was for a community of vendors offering antiques, shabby chic, custom furniture, bath luxuries, artisan goods and more, all under one roof.

As it happened, the old depot offered the right roof.

"It's a perfect fit," Peter Gross said of its prime location with highway frontage and 3,500 square feet of antique ambiance. "When we came upon the building after it came up for sale," they knew they finally had found the right home for Colette's venture.

Most of the vendors already have committed, in plenty of time for the June 7 opening. Colette Gross still is looking for a few more artisans, someone to operate the coffee bar and another vendor to run an old-fashioned penny-candy-style store.

It hasn't been hard to sign up vendors so far.

"They walk into the building and it speaks to them," Colette said. "It feels so good. There's just a nice historical aura we preserved - it's not glitzy and modern."

Both of them have put a lot of energy into capturing that feel.

It's not the first restoration adventure for the couple, who live some distance west of Kalispell. They moved two Kalispell houses, one to Lower Valley and one to Tetrault Road north of town, and restored them.

And they moved a building from Meridian Road and converted it into a hangar at Cabin Creek Landing.

In the case of this large-scale depot, restoration began with research.

Originally, Peter said, the depot stood near the present-day North Fork Road overpass but was moved west to the road's junction with Nucleus Avenue. When a new depot was built in 1953, the original depot's east end got chopped off for use as a tool shed during construction. A logger bought the full building in the next year or so and owned it for another decade before selling it to Linc France.

The Grosses haven't yet tracked down all its history, but think the depot was moved to its present site when the logger owned it.

As a train depot, the freight house was on the building's current west end and the station house to the east.

Although the roof was open and much taller, the freight-house walls were just eight feet high. A gap between inner and outer faces of those walls offered the perfect spot, Peter speculates, for railhouse workers to toss their beer bottles when the bosses came along. The wall and an attic were filled with old beer, liquor and soda bottles, elixir bottles, cans, candy wrappers, lumps of coal, railroad paperwork, even a felt hat.

"The fascinating thing for us was that they moved from the railroad and they stayed in the walls (unbroken) - until we opened up the walls and they started leaking out the bottom," he said.

In the restoration, they gutted the building, then preserved those plank walls and replicated the plank flooring in the freight house, the original maple flooring in the station house, the beaded-board ceilings and walls in the rest of the building, a brick chimney and partial wall between the two portions, another angled wall at the old ticket counter area, the original windows and transoms, and the original doors.

Outside, they retained the original corbels beneath the original roof and its overhang, built platforms to recall the depot's original platforms at the train station, and are putting Linc's add-on shop area to use as storage and possible display and future expansion area.

As the building goes into full-time use once again, they hope to hear from historians who can fill them in on the rest of the depot's past lives.

It sets the stage for an artful blending that will be the theme for The Shops at Station 8 - named for the train depot's debut in 1908, as near as the Grosses can tell, and its reopening in 2008.

And it's a longtime dream come true for Colette Gross.

She came from a 29-year career in retail, starting with fashion apparel at Southgate Mall while still a student at the University of Montana, then moving into home decor at the Bombay Co. where "I filled my passion for home interior."

She's been a vendor in Whitefish Antiques above Loula's cafe for the past 18 months or so but "I always wanted my own shop," she said.

Customers with all sizes of pocketbooks will wander along a layout where one shop flows into the next, with a couple hundred square feet parceled out to each.

Antiques will be offered up by Ragtime, Relics, Montana Deb, Robbin Antiques and the garden-specialty-shop Flower Frog. The Salvage Sisters will have one-of-a-kind artisan goods. Corrina Bella Design has shabby chic. Good Wood will sell its custom furniture. Home fragrance and bath specialties will be in A Little Candle and Bath Co., Alpine Glow and Savour du Jour. Chris' Tea Cottage will retail tea items. There will be Custom Jewelry by Denise Holm. Photography and hand-crafted designs will be in Merla Barta Designs.

Most are Montana vendors, many from the Flathead. Some extend to the Pacific Northwest.

The city has turned out to be the right place at the right time.

"Columbia Falls is on the cusp of good things that are starting to happen," Peter Gross said. Its highway frontage, easy access and central, highly visible location are crucial.

"But you can't deny the tourist traffic that goes by every day, not just in the summer," he said, but also in the winter from snowmobilers, cross-country skiers and winter lodge visitors. "It's a very vibrant corridor."

Judging from the initial response, he also expects strong customer support from Columbia Falls and locals across the valley.

"Columbia Falls people have been very, very supportive," Peter said. When word got out, "they came out of the woodwork. They expressed their gratitude that we're saving the building, not knocking it down to build a casino or gas station or something else.

"When I tell them about things from the retail side, they're excited because they say we need someplace to shop here in town. They don't want to have to go into Kalispell or Bigfork," he said. And "Yes, there will be high-end antiques, but there will be affordable things, too."

Since the day her phone number went up on the side of the building, Colette Gross said she's been welcomed into the community's open arms - particularly by the town's other antiques dealers.

"I'm really trying to make it local, because locals want to buy local and tourists want to buy local," she said. "I'll add a fun flavor with the French bath goods, and merchandise will change regularly.

"You're going to be inspired, you're going to be tempted by the product as well as tempted by the prices.

"Truly, we are trying to make it affordable."

Reporter Nancy Kimball can be reached at 758-4483 or by e-mail at nkimball@dailyinterlake.com