Nucleus to see another major improvement
A sketch of the new building by architect Christine Bleyhl.
By CHRIS PETERSON
Hungry Horse News
Nucleus Avenue will see more development, and investment, in the coming weeks.
Uptown Hearth owner Terri Feury said an additional building, immediately adjacent to the current bakery, is slated to start going up soon.
Feury and her business partners decided to close the popular bakery in the fall of 2020 due to the pandemic, as the space inside simply couldn’t accommodate both customers and staff safely.
It also gave her time to plan for the future expansion, she noted.
That vision is now coming to fruition, as the expanded bakery and a new coffee roasting facility by Matt Bussard is going into the ground floor of the building, with office space for rent on the second story.
The ground floor will have a much larger dining room, Feury noted. The old bakery will undergo a remodel as well.
The building itself will be made out of cross-laminated timbers that use smaller strips of wood than other CLT, which typically uses larger dimension lumber.
The new material was imported by Pat Clark of Wooden Haus Supply and Stoltze Timber Systems, Inc.
CLT is a structural wood material that’s made by gluing together dimension lumber under high pressure.
The building will also be supplemented with solar power and financing was secured through Freedom Bank, Feury said.
All told, the project is about a $1.5 million investment, she said.
The hope is to have it open by next spring.
“It’s my crusade so we don’t have to east franchise food,” Feury, a longtime baker, said.
Over the past four years Nucleus Avenue has seen a renaissance, with the first big step coming in 2018 when restauranteur Pat Carloss remodeled the old Sportsman Bar into the Gunsight Bar and Grill.
In addition, developer Bill Goldberg built condos and commercial space at the corner of Nucleus and Seventh Street and new salons and service businesses have popped up along Nucleus as well.
Developer Mick Ruis has transformed the city square with new condos and retail space. One building is nearly complete at 540 Nucleus Avenue and another should be finished next year.
In the summertime, it can be difficult to get a parking spot along the south end of the city’s main street as business has boomed.
Columbia Falls, in a word, has been discovered.