Kalispell Chamber hopes to find new offices by October

The Kalispell Chamber of Commerce hopes to have a new home secured by October or November, President Lorraine Clarno told local business leaders Tuesday.

Chamber officials have been searching for a suitable replacement for their current home — a former Great Northern Railway Depot building leased from the city of Kalispell — for about a year and half, but say that homeless activity in the park has forced them to speed up the organization’s timeline.

The chamber is employing a security guard at the cost of $1,800 a week, Clarno said at the June 6 meeting of the Kalispell Business Improvement District. It’s not a sustainable arrangement, she said.

Chamber staff will work remotely from June 9 until a new office location is secured. The visitor’s center, housed in the same building, will be relocated to the Kalispell Grand Hotel on South Main Street.

The chamber’s board will discuss the organization’s options at its June 27 meeting, with the “worst case” scenario requiring administrative staff to work remotely through the year’s end, Clarno said.

Though word of the chamber’s departure from the former railroad building emerged just last week, proposals for the future of the space have already sprung up. Members of the ImagineIF Libraries Board of Trustees have since expressed interest in moving the Kalispell branch to the spot, which they see as centrally-located.

Kalispell City Manager Doug Russell, meanwhile, said at a June 5 City Council meeting that the municipality is considering moving law enforcement to the location, in part to deter the presence of homeless people in the area.

City Council earlier this year approved several public space-related ordinances aimed at preventing homeless people from congregating in municipal parks. Officials temporarily shuttered the gazebo at Depot Park, formerly an impromptu shelter for a few of the city’s homeless, during those conversations.

Reporter Adrian Knowler can be reached at 758-4407 or aknowler@dailyinterlake.com.