HAMILTON — A lot has changed in Hamilton over the years, but one building has been a constant downtown: the historic town hall and fire station. But, like many older buildings, it has asbestos and lead paint inside. The City is continuing efforts to remediate the contamination and preserve the building as a piece of Hamilton’s history and future.
(WATCH: Hamilton continues efforts to remediate an iconic downtown building)
“I feel that this building is more than just a building, it has a spirit. So many people have passed through it over the years, and I feel a duty to preserve this building for the city of Hamilton,” said Hamilton Mayor Dominic Farrenkopf. “It will be a wonderful project when it's finished, like a jewel of downtown Hamilton.”
Built in 1906, the building was once home to City Hall, the library, the police station and, most recently, the fire station. In 2022, the fire department moved out. Since, the building has mostly sat vacant, sometimes used for storage.
“Really, it's a kind of an iconic piece of Hamilton's history and we wanted to kind of see how we're going to make this building a key focal point of Hamilton for generations to come,” said city planner Matthew Rohrbach.
After the fire department moved out, the City started looking at options to re-use or re-develop the building. They are in the early stages of a plan to once again use the building to house Hamilton’s City Hall and the Bitterroot Public Library.
“We’re still in the beginning of the process,” Rohrbach said. “We're right in the middle of Downtown Hamilton, so the hope is with having City Hall offices, library in this key location will really add vibrancy to Downtown Hamilton and allow people to appreciate the historic building.”
But, they knew there could be some challenges lurking inside
“We knew there was a likelihood that there was asbestos, lead paint,” Rohrbach said. “Pretty common with a lot of these older historic buildings that have lead-based paint and asbestos in them.”
The City worked with the Montana Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) to perform environmental assessments, which confirmed the contaminants were inside. Rohrbach said that there is no current public health risk, as the asbestos and lead paint are not being disturbed.
“If you're just going to go in there and use it as is and not disturb that, then it's fine,” he said. “But if we're going to go in there and remodel, which the plans are to do, then you have to abate that lead paint and asbestos.”
The first step towards bringing the public back into the historic building is removing the contamination.
The City has secured funding from the DEQ, the Ravalli County Economic Development Authority and the Department of Commerce to put towards the remediation and the project. They are currently doing another environmental assessment to get an updated projection of how much the remediation will cost.
“Then, we'll put the project out to bid likely this winter, at which point we'll have kind of exact costs for the abatement and see whether the grant funding will cover all of that,” Rohrbach said. “But, at this point we're confident that we'll be able to do most of, if not all, of the needs of abatement.”
The City is also working with the library on plans and a schedule for the new version of the building. They are aiming to have more information on what it will look like in early 2027.
“I think that people that live in the Bitterroot Valley and especially in Hamilton, there's a lot of things that have changed over the years, and this can be one of those anchor points that, ‘Hey, that building is still there,’” Mayor Farrenkopf said. “Like maybe it's being used for something else, but the building itself is still there.”
