Running on empty
<p>The former Columbia Falls Clinic on Nucleus Avenue is now owned by Northwest Health Care and is empty and for sale.</p>
While the residential and recreational real estate market in and around Columbia Falls has seen an uptick in the past two years, there are still plenty of empty or unused commercial properties in the city — and many have been empty for years. Some properties are not even for sale — they’re just vacant.
Whitefish Credit Union owns a prime corner lot at Fourth Avenue West and U.S. 2, the former Klean Cars dealership. It’s been empty for years. The credit union also owns several lots to the west that include the former Pizza Hut restaurant.
Over the years, the restaurant site has been rented out to various retail businesses, but none lasted long. The last one was a used clothing store. According to state tax records, the lots and buildings combined are assessed at $531,000. The credit union did not return a call about the future of the property.
Most of the city’s empty commercial properties are in the heart of downtown. Some buildings on Nucleus Avenue seem to make better storage units than businesses. The Pony Circus Antiques building is co-owned by Mary Marantette and the Maurice DeGennaro Living Trust, according to tax records. One end of the building was rented to a dance studio for some time, but that business left.
The main building has been used to store antiques for years and isn’t used as an active retail establishment. The property is listed for sale with an asking price of $650,000, according to agent Stephanie Robertson. The owner recently tried to auction off the property, but apparently no one showed up.
An old Quonset hut and adjacent vacant lot just down the street is owned by Ian Collins of Whitefish. The property isn’t listed for sale, but the hut is used for storage, and the city recently put grass and a sprinkler system in the vacant lot in a deal with Collins to create a pocket park.
The Davall building on Fifth Street West, originally built in the 19th century, has been vacant and for sale for years. A message left with the listing agent went unreturned, but the building and land is assessed at $308,000.
On Sixth Street West across from City Hall, office space owned by the Steelworkers union has been used by several tenants, but today it’s largely unused or empty altogether.
A big hole can be found in the heart of downtown. The former First Citizens Bank once had a bright future as a community center when the First Best Place Task Force acquired it a few years back and turned it into Glacier Discovery Square.
But the nonprofit ran out of money in 2012, and lienholder Whitefish Credit Union took back ownership. The property was vacant all summer, and all the grass around the 13,000-square-foot building went unwatered and turned brown.
“It’s a tough sell because of its specialized nature,” Columbia Falls Realtor Bill Dakin said.
The former bank property is for sale with an asking price of $425,000 — well below the assessed value of more than $1.3 million.
Plans to turn the building into a new library for the city went south earlier this year. In that deal, the Flathead County Library Board and the Flathead County Library Foundation would have purchased the building for an even greater reduced rate of $300,000. But ultimately the board voted against the plan as they lacked support from both the city council and the county commissioners.
Dakin said other banks have looked at the property since then, but the building is too big. It was designed to store reams of documents, but banks are largely computerized now and simply don’t need that kind of space.
Fred Ricketts, with Venture West Real Estate, has been trying to sell or lease the former Pamida store on U.S. 2. The property was assessed in 2012 for a little more than $1 million, but by 2013, the empty 15,800-square-foot building and land was assessed at $783,395.
What’s hurting that deal is property taxes, Ricketts claimed. Taxes on the land and the building constructed as a grocery store are about $20,000 — which is added to the cost of a monthly lease.
That premium is a tough sell, Ricketts said, even though thousands of cars cruise past the location en route to Glacier National Park everyday in the summer time. The bottom line is commercial real estate in Columbia Falls has been slow to recover from the recession.