Xanterra moves into new C-Falls offices

Xanterra Parks and Resorts have moved its office staff into their newly remodeled building in Columbia Falls.

The converted Pamida store now has 30 offices and many more individual cubicles to house staff for Glacier Park Lodges, Xanterra’s local brand, general manager Marc Ducharme said.

The offices are designed as an administrative facility, not for walk-in service, but interested parties would be welcome, he said. About 30 people work for the company year-round, more than 600 in the summer. The company used locally-sourced contractors and materials for the new office space, including about $150,000 in office supplies bought from one local company. The offices include a conference room and a storage room for worker’s uniforms.

Xanterra only had a few months to prepare for this year’s Glacier National Park tourist season. The company learned it was awarded a 16-year contract to run the Park’s major lodges and Red Bus fleet in August 2013 but didn’t take possession of the properties until the end of the year. Still, things went pretty well, Ducharme said.

“We were pretty pleased with the way things went for the most part,” he said.

The company was able to open up all of its properties on time, he noted, and had guest approval ratings of 86 percent, which he said was high for the industry.

The company’s future goals are to continue work on preserving the historic structures. Most of the Park’s lodges are 100 years old or older.

“We’d like to enhance the amount of projects we do,” Ducharme said.

The next big project for the company, however, lies outside the Park. It will start construction of a 30,000-square-foot garage and storage facility for the historic Red Bus fleet on Highway 206 next spring.

The goal is to have the building completed by next fall. The buses are currently stored and serviced at a private hangar at Glacier Park International Airport. Xanterra is contractually obligated to maintain and rehabilitate the red buses over the course of the contract.