Bigfork celebrates affordable housing project

Chris King first moved into an affordable unit at the Little Jon apartment complex in Bigfork five years ago, when he needed open heart surgery that would require him to miss a few months of work. A blood clot turned three months into a year, and his financial situation grew even more precarious.

He is a single father of a 16-year-old, who he said gets straight A’s. He credits some of his and his son’s success today in the safety net the apartments created for him when he needed it years ago.

King recounted his story on Tuesday afternoon to a crowd of about 50 people at a sunny grand-opening ceremony for the new-look apartments that was attended by Gov. Steve Bullock.

Bullock followed King’s story by speaking about the importance of affordable housing in rural Montana.

“You can’t have a decent job if you don’t have a place to go home at night,” Bullock said. “And anyone that has a decent job also ought to be able to have dignity in the place they live and ought to be able to raise kids in a place they can be proud of.”

The sun was shining as Bullock cut a ribbon that had been tied across the path that leads from the new playground to the front door of one of the buildings. Community members were then given tours of a few different apartments and the new on-site Bigfork ACES after school program for sixth-, seventh- and eight-graders.

The new ACES after school program facility has increased attendance by about 20 percent, said executive director of the program Cathy Hay. Before, the middle school program was mixed with the elementary school one and wasn’t so popular with the older students, Hay said. Now, the facility accommodates about 20 different students on any given week.

The space has a classroom, a kitchen where dinner is served each day and a small computer lab against one wall. They also have a bearded dragon named Gravity because when they got him two years ago the children were amazed because when they dropped him he always landed on his feet, Hay said. He also grew more than they thought he would, and is now about the size of a pineapple.

The 31 renovated units are a mixture of 1, 2 and 3-bedroom apartments. They have new windows, paint, cabinets, countertops and some new appliances. The windows that were previously in the building were 24 years old and drafty, said Julie Stiteler, a housing project with Missoula-based nonprofit Homeword, which collaborated on the project with Washington-based developer GMD Development.

“It’s amazing how much better windows are now than they were 24 years ago,” Stiteler said.

The team made efforts to do the renovations in a sustainable manner, Stiteler said. In areas where new carpet or flooring wasn’t needed, they kept the old stuff. Still, the common corridors outside the apartments still smell of fresh paint and construction materials.

The lion’s share of the construction was done earlier this year and residents were all moved into their new units by the end of July. The total cost of the project was about $4.3 million, and construction costs comprised $2.1 million of that total.

Part of the project has yet to be completed. A covered picnic pavilion will soon take up the site of the grand opening, but the parts were ordered from Florida and have been held up in the unusually virulent hurricane season. They are supposed to arrive next week, and over the next few weeks it will be added along with some benches situated throughout the complex, Stiteler said.

Representatives from all over the valley attended the grand opening, but the happiest folks looked to be King’s comrades, the other current residents. They each had to be temporarily relocated for about a month while the contractors remodeled their apartments, one building at a time. They’ve been back at home for almost three months now.

King is from San Francisco and loves being near the water. He is thankful he didn’t have to leave Bigfork in a time of need, because he’s grown fond of the place.

“I don’t think there is any way I could do without the Little Jon Apartments,” King said.