Downtown paint store closing

After 90 years in downtown Kalispell, Saverud Paint Shop is holding a “retirement sale” to liquidate its inventory and close its doors for good at the end of this month.

“It was a tough decision to make,” store manager Dale Saverud said. “But it’s the right decision to make.”

Sales have languished for several years at one of Kalispell’s oldest family-run stores, prompting the end of a discussion that had started some time ago.

“The construction downturn has been very long. Very, very long,” Dale said. “We don’t have nearly as much contractor business as we had.”

Changes in population and shopping habits, perpetual parking challenges and the rise of all-in-one big box stores in the Flathead Valley didn’t help the store’s bottom line either.

“It all just kind of — it’s something we have needed to consider. We didn’t want to, but we needed to,” said Dale’s brother, Wayne Saverud.

Saverud Paint Shop has been a Kalispell fixture from the city’s early years.

The business opened in 1923 when John Saverud — who had emigrated from Norway to Montana just a few years earlier — bought Angell’s Store. The prior owner of the hardware store had moved the building to the 300 block of First Avenue East in Kalispell from the original town site in Demersville. 

And while an addition was added to the rear of the building in the early 1960s, Saverud Paint Shop remains one of the last few buildings in Kalispell to retain its original facade.

 A few years later in the 1920s, John’s brothers Pete and Berger — the latter the father of Wayne and Dale — started a painting business and set out to paint and wallpaper the valley, carrying supplies at first in their Model T truck. That business lasted until 1970.

Pete bought the paint shop in 1944 and ran it with his wife Willie until 1971. That’s when Wayne cut short his  

 teaching career to buy the store where he and his younger brother Dale worked growing up.

Over nine decades, most members of the Saverud family spent some time working in the paint shop. 

Dale worked at the store from 1970 to 1974 while he was in high school. He continued working there off and on through college until 1976. After working for 26 years in the electronics field in Phoenix, Ariz., Dale returned to Kalispell to run Saverud Paint Shop full time in 2003. 

“I had been wanting to come back to the valley for a long time,” he said. “And our family situation was such that it presented an opportunity to come back.”

Dale’s son Erik spent several summers working at the store. So did Wayne’s children. And most recently, Dale’s daughter and her 3-year-old son, who live in an apartment upstairs, came down to help push a broom across a floor that has been in the family for almost a century. 

“So we actually had a fourth generation in here,” Dale said of the shop.

Wayne — who is now in his mid-60s — hasn’t been actively involved in running Saverud Paint Shop since 1988 but owns the building. He said he will be trying to find a new tenant for the first floor. 

Dale said he’s still working on his plans and will spend the summer figuring out what he wants to do next.

For anyone looking to stay in business as long as the Saverud family has, their advice is it’s all about relationships.

“That’s what it’s all about,” Dale said. “Customers say they kept coming back because they like the knowledge we have about the products and the suggestions we can make for them. That’s what they say they’ll miss the most.” 

Those relationships are also what Dale said he will miss the most about the business. “I’ll miss the people, the friendships we built up over the years,” he said. 

But both of the brothers plan to stay in the valley where their father Berger put down roots. And their message to the community is: “Thanks for a great 90 years.”

Saverud Paint Shop is located at 315 First Ave. E. Hours are 8 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Monday to Friday and 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday.

Reporter Tom Lotshaw may be reached at 758-4483 or by email at tlotshaw@dailyinterlake.com.