Super 1 remodeling under way

An early projection for a mid-June opening date of the new Super 1 Foods store in Kalispell is a bit over-ambitious, a store official said Friday.

But the company, based in Hayden Lake, Idaho, expects to have a more realistic opening projection by the middle of April.

"Probably in two or three weeks we'll have [a better idea] to when you can accurately predict a timeline for the project," Randy McIntire said. He's in charge of remodels and resets of the group of Super 1 stores co-owned by his father, Ron McIntire.

Two or three weeks is how much longer he figures the interior demolition of the former Tidyman's supermarket will take as crews remove old walls, floors, decor and lighting.

Plumbers started working in the store recently, McIntire said, and city inspectors are on the scene to answer questions and certify that plumbing and other work meets code as remodeling proceeds.

Remodeling uncovers structural and utility issues that are unknown until demolition is under way.

"Everything looks pretty good. It's not that old a building," McIntire said. "You can guess but you've got to see your demolition before you can see what you can use and can't use."

It will be the fourth Super 1 in the Flathead. The first went into Evergreen, followed by Columbia Falls and then Whitefish.

Super 1 Foods bought the Kalispell building from Tidyman's when the supermarket remodeled the building around 2001 or 2002, McIntire said. Then Tidyman's leased it back from Super 1, eventually went out of business, and Super 1 now is moving into its own building.

The Evergreen Super 1 store will remain open.

McIntire said the 54,000-square-foot building - Tidyman's had pegged it at 58,000 "but we're not finding that," he said - will be similar to the Whitefish Super 1 store, but it also will include a full natural, organic foods store.

It will have a bigger seafood department, but other than that it will be the same as the others, with meats, produce, bakery and dry groceries departments.

Most of the building will be sales floor, making it the largest of the four stores here.

He said between 90 and 110 people will staff the new Kalispell store, about the same work force as the Evergreen store. It's too early in the project, however, for him to predict how many current Super 1 workers will transfer from the Flathead's existing stores to the new one.

"We'll know in the next month or so," he said. "When we opened in Whitefish, about a third of the crew came over from Columbia Falls or Evergreen. I would hope that would be the same. It's by far the easiest way to train."

He couldn't confirm a report that Super 1 already has received a large number of job applications, but he knows the process is in the works.

"From what I hear, there are applications in already," McIntire said, "and that hasn't happened in the past three or four years."

The Whitefish store opened during a time of a worker shortage in the Flathead when employers across the valley were having trouble finding enough qualified workers to fill job openings.

McIntire said it took two years before the Whitefish store was fully staffed.

Ron McIntire and a business partner own the land separately from the Super 1 Foods stores that McIntire's company builds, owns and operates in Idaho, Washington and Montana. Other Montana stores are in Hamilton, Polson and Stevensville.

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