Ninth Avenue cherry warehouse overhauled

POLSON — A long-standing Polson building has received a major face lift, bringing new office space to the area, while keeping several pieces of the past intact. 

The old cherry warehouse on Ninth Avenue, which was sold to a Utah-based developer in 2008, has an entirely new storefront and has been divided into four suites. General contractor Jim Andler, of Kalispell, has worked with local construction companies preparing the building.

The renovation includes $60,000 worth of electrical wiring and made-to-order suites that have been occupied by a local quilting store and the Montana Department of Revenue.

Upstairs, the building’s bridge trusses rest untouched, though full of the autographs of hundred of past workers who knew the building when it was a fruit packing plant. The antique beams were “an engineering feat” for the builders of the warehouse, Andler said.

Years before the suites went in, millions and millions of the valley’s mascot - the Flathead cherry - were processed during the buildings run as a fruit packaging plant.

“It was an institution,” Lake County Abstract and Title Company title officer Kyle Karstens said. “Summer kids, that was their livelihood.”

The lot was originally purchased in 1947 by Polson Produce Company, which gave the railroad an easement so goods could be delivered right to the property’s backdoor. Polson Produce owned the building and a portion of the lot until 1997.

The local job service placed the willing workforce of local high school students at the plant to sort the cherries.

Brent Burland remembers an open floor full of conveyer belts, sorting machines and teenagers. Burland worked in the warehouse for two years in the early 1980s.

It was just like lunch break, he said, standing elbow to elbow with the other sorters, talking about the day. Burland’s black, all caps signature appears several times on a truss at the top of the building’s stairs, next to several other Polson High School class of 1984 signees.

The crews heard the operation might be closing down, and “we just decided to go up there at the end of the season,” Burland said.

Andler said several other former sorters have stopped to inquire about the state of their old workplace. The attic was a place where the crews took breaks, he said.

Today’s building occupants can use the attic as storage space.