Old Buildings, New Ideas

By Yogesh Simpson, 10-26-07

	Caption: When High Plains Architects began renovating the L&L building in downtown billings they found 30 inches of pigeon guano on the second floor. It is now a restaurant.

Adaptive re-use was a buzzword dominating the first “showcase” segment of NewWest.Net’s second annual Real Estate and Development in the Northern Rockies conference in Missoula Friday.

The slideshow presentation featured creative new projects in Whitefish, Billings and Red Lodge.

Brent Moore, an urban planner from Red Lodge outlined the big questions facing the small town as it grows from 2,500 residents to a projected 3,600 residents in the next 10 years.

Having recently built a new hospital and a new high school, Red Lodge is faced with the question of how to re-use the large and centrally located structures that former housed those institutions. Moore showed images of several other opportunities for renovating historic structures including Labor Temple and cannery.

Moore also highlighted the integral relationship between transportation and land use that he says is largely overlooked in planning discussions around the sate. Complicating the transportation planning issues in Red Lodge is the fact that the local ski area was recently bought by a San Francisco-based corporation that has yet to reveal its development plans.

“We’re hopeful that we set a good solid plan in place so that when private investment does come it will be a partner in our future,” said Moore.

Randy Hafer, an architect with High Plains Architects in Billings, provided a glimpse of how that potential might be realized. Hafer displayed an impressive portfolio of completed projects in downtown buildings, almost all of which involved the renovation of historic structure to accommodate mixed use.

“Our firm has really three passions: downtown, old buildings and green,” said Hafer. Think of downtown, he said as the core of an apple. “If you have a rotten core you’re not going to have a good apple,” he said.

The firm has converted, among other buildings, a firehouse, a warehouse, and even a drive-thru pawnshop into ground-level commercial spaces with modern loft apartments in the upper floors.

Though it is not an adaptive re-use project, perhaps the most striking project undertaken by the firm is the offices of the Northern Plains Resource Council. The building was LEED Certified Platinum by the U.S. Green Building Council and recently dubbed the “greenest commercial building in Montana” by the Billings Gazette.

In downtown Whitefish Great Northern Ventures LLC recently removed an old Exxon station and whole lot of contaminated soil, to make room for a new mixed-use development called Block 46. Managing member Paul Johannsen showed how the project will occupy a whole city block with retail, residential, fractional ownership units.

The primary challenge facing Johannsen is lining up the plans for the development with the moving target that is the city’s master plan. The city hasn’t officially adopted the plan and the height restrictions it outlines have provided a flashpoint for heated debate.

Regardless of whether the development is two or four stories, the goal is to avoid a monolithic appearance.

“We tried to create a look that doesn’t look like it’s one large building,” said Johannsen.

A variety of building materials and a mixture of heights and bump-outs will be used to achieve that goal and help the project fit in with the current feel of the downtown area.