Marble Stays the Course

By K. Schipper

GREAT FALLS, Mont. – Instead of the next big thing in today’s business climate, the idea of looking at what you’ve got can pay off – especially with stone.

It’s a concept that meshed with Todd Stam, owner of Coeur d’Alene, Idaho-based Aspen Homes & Development LLC, who’s bucking a down real estate market to remodel a 1929 office building into downtown loft condominiums in this central Montana city.

Click photo to enlargeAnd there’s one component of the job that became a good reinvestment: the building’s original marble panels.

Stam fell in love with the structure – known as the Montana Building – almost 20 years ago, and this is his second remodel of the property. Both times, he’s respected the materials and workmanship that went into the original construction.

“I bought the property in 1994, and from the beginning the overall quality of the building intrigued me,” Stam says. “I was particularly taken by the craftsmanship.”

It was the little finishing touches the building offered, such as the terrazzo floors and marble panels, that first caught his eye.

“There are 2 ½” mahogany doors throughout the whole building, and the transoms above the doors are still operable,” Stam says. “There are little brass openers at eye level; you push a button that’s on a pulley system that opens it up above the door. Being in the construction industry, I’d never seen anything quite like it in terms of quality.”

Stam’s first effort at remodeling the building came at the end of 1990s, when he tried to bring it to a level that would make the space attractive again for offices – the building’s original purpose.Click photo to enlarge

Fortunately, that remodel was accomplished without disturbing any of the fittings Stam found most interesting.

“All of the common areas of the building – the entryways, the lobby, the staircases and the hallways – are all intact,” Stam says. “We basically put them back to where they were. Over the years, there have been a few small remodels here and there, but we would always put it back to the original state it was in.”

That includes the original marble, which wasn’t touched.

Following that remodel, Stam says the occupancy of the building went to close to 100 percent. However, over the past decade, the trend in Great Falls has been to move many offices to new development west of downtown.

Ultimately, it’s that tenant exodus that caused him to come back for his current remodeling.

“We decided to turn it into residential condos,” he says. “We’re taking each of the second and third floors and making them into seven residential condos.”

To find a stone contractor for the job, Stam also didn’t have to look very far. He had already contracted with locally based Malisani Inc. to do the stonework in the high-end kitchens and bathrooms of the reconfigured building.

He adds that Malisani may also have done the stonework when the building was renovated in the late 1990s.

“Certainly we wanted marble and granite in the kitchens and bathrooms, and since they were going into the units and getting them ready to be residential living space, it just made sense,” says Stam. “Tony Malisani is also kind of the go-to guy in town; he comes highly recommended.”