C-Falls developer eyes old junior high for senior housing

The Columbia Falls School Board on Monday unanimously declared the old junior high school and its adjacent gymnasiums as surplus property, paving the way for the eventual sale of the buildings.

Local developer Mick Ruis confirmed Monday he is interested in the property and would like to convert the building into senior housing and possibly use the gyms for a wrestling academy.

The old junior high has been used by students at Glacier Gateway Elementary School and the Boys and Girls Club over the past few years.

But with a new Glacier Gateway school under construction, the junior high building no longer is needed.

The Boys and Girls Club looked at the property as a potential new home, but ultimately declined to proceed with it, instead opting to build a new facility eventually.

When it decided to go ahead with a new school, the school district found mothballing the old building could cost about $1.34 million, according to estimates by LPW Architecture, the firm that designed the new school.

To retain the building, the district would have to put on a new roof and reconfigure the existing plumbing and heating, as the north annex will be torn down to make way for the new Gateway School. The school also has several thousand square feet of asbestos tiles in the building and in the crawl space, as well as asbestos in the upper gym walls of the multipurpose room.

In addition to the cost of renovations, the district estimates it would cost about $15,000 annually to maintain and heat the building.

Now that the school board has declared the building surplus property, the district will formally advertise requests for proposals for the structure and future plans for the building.

The junior high was once Columbia Falls High School, but the district completed a new high school in 1960. It was then a junior high, but the district built a new junior high about 20 years ago.