By Kevin S. Giles

The pandemic and a $400 city fine nearly killed the latest effort to restore Hotel Deer Lodge, an abandoned 33,000-square-foot brick structure at the heart of a western Montana town’s business district.

“When they shut us down it took the wind out of our sails,” said Kip Kimerly, who leads the nonprofit venture to revive the long-shuttered hotel that opened in 1912 to a burst of civic celebration.

Now, he’s promising a renewed effort to bring the historic building back to life.

“All I want is a little bit of any type of help going forward. I’m not in this for self-gratification,” said Kimberly, the chief executive officer of Precious Vodka USA, Inc., a Montana company that sells products in several states and foreign countries.

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A year ago, Kimerly said, a city official threatened daily fines if work continued on the hotel after wind blew a section of decorative trim off the roof. Kimerly said he protested, pointing out that he didn’t own the hotel but represented the nonprofit group trying to save it. The city assessed the $400 fine on his personal water bill, he said.

Full speed ahead

Subsequent changes at City Hall led to a renewed effort. Now, Kimerly has Mayor Diana Solle’s support to continue his quest to find new purpose for the hotel.

“It’s the heart of downtown Deer Lodge,” Solle said. “It’s so important. Tearing it down would destroy the whole perspective of downtown history.”

Solle, elected mayor of this 3,000-resident city in November 2019, said most Deer Lodge residents prefer to save the building, closed since the 1980s.

“They all want it here,” she said. “If it can be renovated that’s what people want. We’ve got to stop and think what Deer Lodge is. We’re totally unique from any other town in Montana. People would love to see it going and see a couple of businesses down there.”

Solle sees potential in the top floors becoming senior housing (with a new elevator), and adding retail shops on the street level that attract residents and tourists alike.

Finding uses for the historic building, at the very center of downtown, would bring more people to town, she said. A revived hotel also would provide jobs and add property tax revenue to the city’s budget, she said.

Much cleanup required

Immediate needs include volunteer labor for clearing rubble. Kimerly and other members of the preservation board also seek funding to rebuild the hotel’s roof. Water damage is substantial inside, he said.

In its heyday, Hotel Deer Lodge became the hub of social activity at the core of a downtown district stocked with Old West architecture. It opened in 1912 and quickly became a gathering place for clubs, socials, dances, banquets and any other social activities. Its dozens of guest rooms hosted travelers at “one of the finest” lodging accommodations in Montana because of its elevator and hot and cold running water in rented rooms.

The hotel’s rare period architecture includes three “towers” built over the main floor to ensure daylight in every visitor’s room. It became known as a “railroad hotel” because of its proximity to the passenger train lines and railroad repair shops of years past. Backers of its construction included well-known names such as Leopold S. Schmidt, who founded Olympia Brewing Co., and Frank Conley, who led the building of Montana State Prison on Main Street. Conley, then the mayor of Deer Lodge, was the hotel’s first registered guest.

Once a vibrant place

The Greyhound bus stopped there. A connecting door from the lobby led to a coffee shop and restaurant. Various businesses on the ground floor, at the front of the hotel, included a barber shop, hair salon, and sporting goods store.

Terry Jennings, who represents Discover Deer Lodge, a development group that’s opening a visitor center two blocks south on Main Street, said he would like to see condominiums or apartments on the third floor of the old hotel. Restaurants on the street level would be vital as well, he said.

“Deer Lodge desperately needs places to eat,” he said, pointing out that at least two restaurants went out of business during the pandemic.

“I’d love to see it take off,” he said. “It would be such a shame to see it torn down. People need to step up.”

Deer Lodge’s long-range development plan identifies history as the city’s central selling point and calls for its emphasis.

Quest to preserve history

Over the years, demolition and fire claimed several of Deer Lodge’s prominent historic buildings. Among them were the 1896 cell house inside Old Montana Prison, the two-story Central School with its signature fire escape, St. Mary Academy, and the original St. Joseph Hospital, which stood just north of the now-abandoned newer one.

Previous board members of Deer Lodge Preservation, Inc., bought the hotel for $40,000. They spent what money they could raise to make emergency roof repairs, commission an architect to examine the building, and pay for a “brownfield” study to find possible contamination and pollution. Various efforts over the years to pump new life into the hotel failed for lack of substantial funding and public interest.

Dane Schroder, who recently joined the board that Kimerly now leads, envisions a restored Hotel Deer Lodge as necessary to the revival and growth of the city’s economy.

All hands on deck

“When you can see and feel that potential in your heart, you’ll want to help,” he said. “It will be massive undertaking but it’s worth doing. We can’t leave it like it is, we can’t tear it down. I haven’t seen or heard from anybody who doesn’t think it needs to come back.”

Schroder said the community-driven restoration of the city’s 1921 Rialto Theatre, nearly lost in a disastrous fire in 2006, shows that saving the hotel can be done.

“It’s going to require the whole community,” he said. “People who supported the Rialto went far beyond the borders of this town.”

Many interior features of the hotel, including decorative panels, were removed and sold after the hotel closed. However, much remains, including the original marble staircase and oak banister leading from the lobby. The ground-floor banquet room, once the town’s go-to place for parties and celebrations, awaits new uses.

“It will be interesting to see how we can combine history with giving people a pleasant experience,” said Schroder, who was operations manager at the nonprofit YMCA in Butte, Montana, before going to work in the building trades. “If you walk through that building you can’t help but be inspired.”

The banquet room, he said, “isn’t huge but it’s perfect for this town.”

A new roof will come first

Kimerly has estimated that bringing Hotel Deer Lodge back to life will cost $7 million to $14 million. Funds will come from grants, contributors and investors.
Before the pandemic, he said, a Texas contractor committed to invest $5 million in the hotel’s restoration. Kimerly said he personally spent thousands of dollars to prevent water from seeping into the building.

“We put buckets and buckets of tar on that roof,” he said of the latest effort to patch holes.

Kimerly and Schroder want to return a portion of the building to a hotel. The work would require modern features appealing to travelers, Schroder said, because the hotel was built for every two rooms to share a bathroom.

Schroder said the restoration’s success will depend on acquainting people with the inside of the hotel and what it can become if everyone works together.

He favors public tours once cleanup is finished and unstable areas are blocked off. He said people will support what they can see.

“There’s got to be a positive story and a strong vision,” he said.

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Western Montana native Kevin S. Giles wrote the popular prison nonfiction work Jerry’s Riot, the coming-of-age novel Summer of the Black Chevy, and a biography of Montana congresswoman Jeannette Rankin, One Woman Against War, which is an expanded version of his earlier work, “Flight of the Dove.” His new novel, Headline: FIRE! is the third in the Red Maguire series. Masks, Mayhem and Murder is the second. The first is “Mystery of the Purple Roses.” More information is available at https://kevinsgiles.com.