Columbia Falls renaissance

'It feels like a big party and everybody's invited'

Some are calling it a community renaissance.

Promotional materials are salted with words like "excitement," "enthusiasm," "pride."

Columbia Falls, once considered the poor stepsister to the Flathead's more glamorous towns of Whitefish and Bigfork, or even Kalispell, is having its debutante ball of sorts these days.

"What I've heard, what people are kind of saying, is that this is the real Montana," shopkeeper Sally Petersen said. "It's the way it used to be."

At a minimum, there's renewed vigor in town.

Merchants and professionals, the 30-somethings and 40-somethings, are taking a chance on opening new businesses. They're doing it in the heart of the once-flagging uptown district and the business corridor that has developed along U.S. 2.

Jeff and Lynn Chase's "Back In Time," an antiques and collectibles shop with what may be the only vintage '50s-'60s retro room in Montana, superimposes the way it used to be over the way things are headed in the town he's called home since he was a teenager.

"I think… (Glacier National) Park has a lot to do with it And it's just Columbia Falls' time," Chase said. Besides, "people are just nice in Columbia Falls, they're small, hometown. People are looking for that. Just like our store, you get to go back in time."

It's the Chases' third summer in business on Nucleus Avenue, and things are good.

"We had looked at opening a store here 20 years ago," he said. "We looked at the downtown, and it just wasn't the right time. But our sales have tripled since we opened."

Petersen is another. The Minneapolis transplant and her husband Dave were looking to recreate a walkable, friendly, neighborhood feeling when they opened her vintage collectibles shop, Funtastic Finds, in the historic Talbott bank building on Nucleus in June 2006. It's morphed into Fashion Finds where high-end apparel goes for unheard-of low prices. "Frugal never looked so good," she tells her customers.

In a town that's had no full-on clothing store for decades, it's working.

"I'm seeing an uptick, especially with clothing and accessories," she said. "It's something people need, and especially with this economy and the frugality. America has kind of hit the reset button and is looking at new values."

BUT PEOPLE aren't just buying stuff.

They're buying into the idea that Columbia Falls is no longer the low-rent, blue-collar, hick town it's been labeled as for so long.

"It's almost as if - it's difficult to couch this in a way that doesn't sound negative to the past - but it's as if Columbia Falls is having the opportunity to toss the mantle of the industrial jobs' from the past," Barry Conger said.

Mass layoffs and threatened plant closures at Columbia Falls Aluminum Co. and Plum Creek Timber are grim realities for the generations of workers who have drawn some of the best wages in the valley there.

Even so, they also are opportunities, Conger contended. He heads the First Best Place Task Force, a grass-roots group of 400 volunteers working with the Chamber of Commerce to bring new amenities to the town. It's riding the wave of a new realization of what really makes Columbia Falls tick - hometown values and outdoor recreation.

"Columbia Falls has never been able to identify the thing that is next for them," Conger said. "Kalispell has and Whitefish has, but they never have been so dependent on the manufacturing. Columbia Falls always looked for what happens after the resource economy goes away.

"But Columbia Falls now is able to say, 'Hey, we're still viable and we're still important and people want to live here not because of the mill, not because of the aluminum plant, but because it's a cool place to live.'"

CONGER MAY BE excused for being blunt.

He's a hometown boy, born and raised in Columbia Falls. Graduated from the high school here in 1985. Married a hometown girl. He and his wife, Krista, moved away and established prosperous careers elsewhere, she as a science writer, he as a mortgage professional. But they chose to return home and telecommute, raise their children in a place that's safe and active and, well, homey.

It's Gary Hall's hometown too. He comes from an earlier era and, as a former council member, mayor and county commissioner, he's got a longer and arguably broader view.

But he sees the same thing.

Hall helped put together Which Way Columbia Falls in the mid-1990s, another revitalization effort.

"We had a lot of the same ideas and concepts that are happening now. The timing was just a little off back then," Hall said. "We had huge community support, a lot of people willing to help. Basically people just ran out of steam even though they did get some things accomplished."

They got the city's entrances cleaned up, worked up a pedestrian-friendly streetscape idea, laid groundwork for the former First Citizens Bank to become today's Glacier Discovery Square, set the stage for a Columbia Falls network of destination antiques shops.

"It's a culmination of ongoing work," Hall said of today's rejuvenation. "Columbia Falls has always been known for a healthy family environment, a good school system and it's still that way."

CITY GOVERNMENT played another role late last summer as the City Council expanded its central business zone in uptown Columbia Falls, in collaboration with background work from First Best Place. It had started a couple of years earlier with a new building code for large-scale commercial buildings, then small-scale businesses, and finally a realization that parking requirements in those codes could kill a walkable uptown district.

"We wanted to preserve existing buildings, with their presumed historic value," City Manager Bill Shaw said. "And they all heard the message pretty loud when organizations like Main Street [the National Trust for Historic Preservation]" cautioned against large parking lots.

So an ad hoc committee expanded central business zone boundaries to protect existing ambiance and make it pedestrian friendly. It was an important statutory protection.

"But right now, (what's important is' making Discovery Square work and then go from there," Shaw said. "For now making that a community gathering area would be highly beneficial to that area. It will get people to come down to that district, it will have a draw, it will help reoccupy the district and help them realize they're in a very special district."

EVEN THOUGH she's along the U.S. 2 corridor near the south end of Nucleus and away from that uptown district, Colette Gross has never regretted establishing her Shops at Station 8 in June 2008.

"It surpassed my expectations and my projections," she said of her collective of antiques, gifts and home furnishings. "I was blown away."

Columbia Falls locals are her bread-and-butter customers day in and day out, but tourists are an important piece of the revenue picture. Although she has a Whitefish location, too, she's shifted her focus to Columbia Falls and is glad of it.

"I'm grateful I made that decision," she said. "There's energy and optimism and activism. We're renewing our vibrancy. People are making it happen Discovery Square, I can't even tell you what that means. That's the center of our town," with a long schedule of events.

"It's giving vitality. People are not just giving lip service," Gross said, "they're doing it."

Those people, the old-timers and the new-comers, are joining forces for change.

Carol Pike has ridden the ups and downs since starting as executive director for the Chamber of Commerce in 1988. Now, businesses that have been up for sale for some time are selling, and outside interests are investing in the community.

"We've always basically been a small-town community and that's what we're doing now. It's about families," Pike said. "The world is just realizing that now. It's a hometown community, and that's what people are looking for."

It's hard to come up with a comprehensive list of all the city's activities and businesses, but the Chamber and the Task Force are working on it. A new brochure from the Chamber's marketing committee urges visitors and locals to "Make a day of it!" Others aren't stopping there, urging them to make a weekend of it. Their message is clear: There's plenty to do in Columbia Falls.

"I just think we have a lot of new energy in town," Pike said.

And that's helping actualize some long-held goals.

"All these dreams, (what) we wished we had all along, are now coming to fruition," Chamber President Lyle Mitchell said. He's from Hall's and Pike's generation and has run State Farm Insurance in Columbia Falls for 16 years. He has watched efforts come and go but this one's sticking, he thinks.

Despite the economy, the Chamber now has more members than it's seen in a long time, Mitchell said.

It's a migration of young families priced out of Whitefish, he said, and folks who like the recreational opportunities and layout of Columbia Falls combined with the ease of today's high-tech lifestyle. Throw in access to Glacier Park International Airport; improved shopping at Super 1, Smith's and Pamida; and public access to the river at Riverside Park, and you have the beginning of something special.

Outside companies have been investing in Columbia Falls, too, a crucial factor, Mitchell said.

"Employment, employment, employment," he said. "You can't have a viable community without new jobs."

BUT THE VITALITY also comes from deliberate collaborations among the Native Plant Society, Glacier National Park, timber industry groups, the Columbia Falls branch library, North Valley Hospital, the historical society and many more.

Flathead County Library officials plan to move their quarters into the new Glacier Discovery Square when it's finished sometime over the next year. Branch librarian Deena Stacy is excited about being on the plot of ground historically known as the meeting place for Columbia Falls, and about the extra space that the new library will afford for such things as children's story time.

Hospital Chief Executive Officer Jason Spring said the hospital board is entertaining ideas of setting up a health education center there, establishing a health library and hosting physicians' talks in Discovery Square.

Glacier National Park already is in talks with a wide spectrum of timber and environmental groups to cooperate with First Best Place on a natural resource education center.

ALL THIS ATTRACTS hometown returnees. In turn, they help attract new energy.

Hilary (Lange) Hutcheson is one of them. After graduating from Columbia Falls High, the ambitious reporter and news anchor took her broadcast career to Missoula and then Portland. Advancement required the moves, but she always knew she'd come back.

After 13 years away from home, the door opened. She spotted a Hungry Horse News story about First Best Place Task Force efforts to develop recreational opportunities in the area and enhance existing amenities.

"That's exactly what I wanted," Hutcheson said. "It was huge. It was a whole awakening It seemed to me that the whole article was a call out to people, 'You guys can come home now.'"

Last August, she did. Her husband, Shane, developed the business model for Outdoor Media public relations and they headed for Montana with their two young daughters.

Back home she met up with Dave Renfrow, who with his business partner Joan Sandefer was developing the Cosley Building, a green-built and upscale office complex then under construction in Columbia Falls. She bought a condo space before it was even finished and conducts business with national clients from her sweet spot in Columbia Falls.

Now "I try to take advantage of everything in town" - lap swims, resale shops, boating, library story time, fishing, park concerts, farmers market, the hot dog cart and cafes and a cold one after work.

"I've never been bored and I've never wished I hadn't done this," Hutcheson said. "And there's so much more that's happening. Gosh, it's such a renaissance. It feels like a big party and everybody's invited."

ACROSS THE STREET, Columbia Falls native Michael Robison is a hometown believer, too.

When Ron Schafer renovated Old City Hall and offered up commercial rentals on Nucleus, Robison bit. He'd been running the now-closed Army-Navy store and, as a lifelong outdoor sportsman himself, knew the local market was there. On Dec. 1 last year he opened All About Sports and packed it with consigned, used and new sports gear for all seasons. Business volume is three-quarters better than he projected, he said. The jury's still out on his used-tool business, The Tool Shed.

"It's awesome," he said. "I have fun."

He could be doing that anywhere, but he's chosen Columbia Falls.

"Part of it is just growing up here," he said. Family is important to him, as is his quick access to river sports, hiking, skiing, climbing and hunting. And he's encouraged that his classmates are opening businesses up and down Nucleus.

"It's the younger generation that's starting stuff," he said. "And also it's not the old Columbia Falls - the old one where they came in and built it up and then it dwindled away It's staying strong this time."

Up the street, classmate Adam Nelson last month opened NTS, Nelson Technologies and Support. It's a storefront place to offer the computer setup, repair, Web development and related services he's been offering out of his home since 1999. He's added a new dimension with his space for gamers, a safe hangout for kids who love what he loves.

It's a way for Nelson to give back in a bigger way now. After all, he said, "it's my hometown."

RENFROW AND Sandefer made a huge investment in the future of their hometown through the impressive Cosley Building.

Glacier DRS, their joint business for the past quarter century, had been operating out of humble quarters tucked at the foot of a hill for some time.

"In planning for the next generation and looking forward, we needed a little more space," Renfrow said of the company that furnishes and installs doors, frames, hardware, cabinet and mill work for commercial construction. "Then as long as we were doing this, we think there's a market for high-end office and retail space. And then we just got carried away."

They ended up with an 11,000-square-foot suite of condominium office spaces, infused with ideas from the Flathead Green Builders Guild to bring environmental consciousness to a building they figure will be a landmark for 250 years.

Apparently, it's on track for success - four units in the building already are sold or leased.

Renfrow is figuring head estimator Mike Dezzani is "the next generation with DRS, a brilliant young man, a local product" with education from Flathead Valley Community College and a Montana university training.

Located near the foot of Nucleus, the traditional entrance to the city's traditional gathering place, it's an eye-catching welcome to the uptown district. But it's only one example of a trend Renfrow identified throughout the city.

"There are a whole bunch of tipping points," he said. "They're all outward signs of inward change."

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