Section of Gateway mall on auction block

A portion of the former Gateway West Mall in Kalispell that houses a collective of local nonprofits will be sold through an online auction on May 19.

The pending auction has raised questions about whether or not the nonprofit organizations will be forced to relocate.

American Capital Management of Santa Barbara, California, privately owns 100,643 square feet of the mall building and has placed the facility for sale at Auction.com for a starting bid of $600,000.

Gateway Community Center leases more than 52,000 square feet from American Capital to accommodate agencies serving Northwest Montana.

The auction does not affect the TeleTech call center that operates in a 60,000-square-foot section of the former mall — a section that is owned by the Flathead County Economic Development Corp.

United Way is the fiscal agent and project facilitator for Gateway Community Center and the umbrella under which the other nonprofit groups operate at the mall building.

A Gateway Community Center advisory board that includes representatives from various professional and business sectors provides input for the nonprofit collective.

The collective includes Literacy Center of Northwest Montana, Montana Conservation Corps, the United Way Volunteer Center, Violence Free Crisis Line, Court Appointed Special Advocates for Kids, Summit Independent Living, Flathead Food Bank, Best Beginnings Council and Girl and Boy Scouts. A coffee shop also operates under the auspices of the community center.

“We are getting in touch with the tenants; we’re meeting right this minute off site,” United Way Director Sherry Stevens said Monday afternoon about the process of letting everyone know about the auction.

Stevens said the community center has offered to buy the Gateway space for “way more” than the $600,000 starting bid price.

“We’ve been trying to buy since last July, but the owners chose to take another direction,” Stevens said. “We won’t let the dream die.”

The dream Stevens is referring to is the idea of a central campus that initially was proposed by Earl Bennett, a longtime Flathead County administrator, who before his death was a driving force in the early planning stages for such a community center.

Stevens said United Way intends to make a bid for the building.

“Our goal is to participate in the auction, and concurrently we’re working on Plan B,” she said.

Late Monday afternoon Stevens said many of the nonprofit agencies are “alarmed and concerned” about what lies ahead.

“Today, No. 1 we’re making sure agency directors have the facts and what our plans are, and then we’re making sure there is a consistent message for our boards,” Stevens said.

Stevens planned to be out in the mall corridor this morning as volunteers arrive so she can alert them of the auction.

The transformation of the mall into a community center materialized in 2009 with a 10-year lease with American Capital that expires in 2019.

Community contributions to the center have been sizable, Stevens noted, with $201,000 in in-kind contributions of building materials; more than 3,000 volunteers whose work was valued at $486,178; and $162,222 in donated cash. A total of 88 service clubs and businesses have helped create the community center.

Terry Kramer, a local contractor who was among the original advisory board members for the community center, said his business, Kramer Enterprises, donated $40,000 to create space for United Way.

“A lot of blood, sweat and tears have been put into that building,” Kramer said. “It was a great concept to have all those [nonprofit organizations] in one location.”

Kellie Danielson, president of Montana West Economic Development Corporation and Flathead County Economic Development Authority, said American Capital approached the development authority a couple of years ago about buying the mall space.

“At the time the board didn’t feel it fit into their mission,” Danielson said, adding that the authority board will discuss the upcoming auction at its meeting on Friday.

“This is an opportunity for someone locally to purchase the building and sustain a vision that has stabilized the mall over the past few years,” she said.

Each building tenant, including TeleTech, pays common area maintenance fees for the building upkeep and a full-time maintenance manager. Danielson said the pending auction raises questions about how TeleTech will be affected in terms of common area maintenance fees if the current nonprofit tenants exit.

Lori Botkin, director of the Flathead Food Bank, said Monday afternoon she had not yet been informed by the United Way about the building auction.

The food bank and its thrift operation, Second Helpings, lease 27,000 square feet through Gateway Community Center.

If the food bank is forced to relocate, it would be difficult to find a centrally located building that could accommodate the operation, Botkin said.

“It would force a capital campaign” to establish its own facility, she added.

According to Auction.com, the 100,643 square feet of office and retail space up for auction is 74 percent occupied, largely by the Gateway Community Center tenants and New West Health Services, which occupies 16,104 square feet.

“There are five retail tenants, including food service and auto service tenants,” the sale description states, noting a parking ratio of 8.8 spaces per 1,000 square feet.

Gateway West Mall was built in 1974 and remodeled in 1984. By early 1999, amid turmoil between tenants and Collier & Heinz, the Salt Lake City real estate company that then managed the mall, six of the 10 businesses remaining at that time had plans to relocate.

The creation of Gateway Community Center in 2009 culminated more than a dozen years of planning and discussions aimed at establishing a centralized service location for nonprofit agencies and their clients.

American Capital did not return a phone call Monday, and said through a third party it declined to comment on the pending auction.

Features editor Lynnette Hintze may be reached at 758-4421 or by email at lhintze@dailyinterlake.com.