Architecture awards celebrate historic Kalispell buildings

Kalispell has been a hotbed of new development in recent years, but it’s the city’s historic buildings in the spotlight this year as recipients of the City of Kalispell Architectural Review Committee’s annual awards.

The 2020 awards went to Sunrift Beer Company’s new restaurant along the train tracks near Main Street and The Sherman Building at 343 First Avenue West.

Every year since 2010, the Kalispell Architectural Review Committee (ARC) has presented awards for new developments and rehabilitation projects that stand out amid the city’s architectural landscape. The seven volunteer members of the committee work with the Kalispell Planning Office each summer to review construction that was completed during the previous year and select the most outstanding projects.

This year, the awards celebrated successful efforts to bring historic downtown buildings into the 21st century. ARC Board Chair Julia Pierrottet said the organization wanted to celebrate “historic buildings that have been brought back to life.”

She said she hopes Kalispell’s future includes ongoing attention to the past through projects that rehabilitate classic structures throughout the city.

“These two project are taking what is unique about Kalispell and celebrating it,” Pierrottet explained. “This is exactly what we like to see. It’s very Kalispell.”

She said Sunrift Beer Company was honored because the restaurant owners opted to keep the older industrial buildings along the now-defunct train tracks and transform them into a trendy community space.

“They used the old buildings — anybody else might’ve torn them down,” she pointed out.

Instead, the existing structures were incorporated into the restaurant’s pedestrian-friendly outdoor area along the future site of the multi-use Downtown Core Area trail.

“It’s a really good project to use an example of what we’d like to see in the Core Area plan,” Pierrottet said.

An award also went to The Sherman Building — sometimes referred to as the Ivy Building — because the rehabilitation of the historic property succeeded in maintaining the original character of the 1920s-era structure.

The building at 343 First Ave. West was first constructed in the late 1920s as a mortuary, but it eventually fell into disuse until the Eisinger and Lemire families turned it into a rental property for guests of Ben Eisinger’s adjacent guided fishing company.

Pierrottet said contractor Lemire and Company had a knack for preserving the historic features of the structure now known as The Sherman Lodge.

“It’s a really beautiful building. The people who renovated it knew something about historic buildings,” she observed. “They really knew what they were doing.”

“It’s a unique, significant building to Kalispell,” she added. “They just preserved that piece of it, which we also think is wonderful.”

Pierrottet presented the awards virtually during the Kalispell City Council’s monthly meeting on Monday, held via Zoon videoconference.

Reporter Bret Anne Serbin may be reached at (406)-758-4459 or bserbin@dailyinterlake.com.