HAVRE, Mont. (NMB) – 145 people packed into the Duck Inn Olympic Room on Wednesday afternoon for the 112th Annual Havre Chamber of Commerce Meeting and Luncheon, the first since 2020.
Randy Hafer, CEO of High Plains Architects, provided the keynote speech. He detailed his initial thoughts on the city of Havre and discussed the process of creating a downtown master plan, which will provide a blueprint for revitalizing Havre.
“We don’t focus on a building type. We have different, we call them attitudes, that we bring to projects. So we work on a lot of historic buildings, doing renovations and adaptive reuse. We do a lot of high performance buildings, and that just means buildings that are highly energy and resource efficient. We do a lot of projects that are involved with downtown revitalization, and we also do development … One of our goals is not to just hand you a plan that you can quickly sit on a shelf and watch collect dust, but come up with a plan that’s implementable. And we’ll have some projects that we think can be implemented very quickly.”
Hafer said that there are numerous buildings in Havre that have enormous potential.
“We can take really crappy old buildings a do different things with them. Not only does that add to the tax base, but we can add just to the revitalization and the life and character of downtown … Like most Montana towns, there are a lot of great old buildings. But there are also a lot of great old buildings that aren’t being fully utilized. That was really obvious, even from our google walkaround … (during my visit so far), I’ve been so impressed with the different businesses that we’re seeing, the kinds of things that are going on here. But you go back out side and it’s kind of like ‘uhhh. Wow. Everything looks tired, kind of worn out. There’s a lot of filled in windows and that kind of thing. So that stuff ultimately ends up becoming pretty easy. It’s one thing if you’ve got all these buildings boarded up and there is nothing inside. So there’s really a lot inside. And a lot of new businesses, clearly new energy. There’s a lot of younger business owners, that was very exciting.”
Hafer said another issue that will be addressed in the master plan is making the city more friendly for pedestrians.
“There are things we can do about that. They don’t even have to be that expensive. But again, the fabric that already exists in terms of the existing buildings, it’s not like ‘wow, the only way to make this work is to tear everything down and start over.’ You’ve got it. We just have to show you how to fix it up. And we’ve got the ability to do that, and some of it is quite simple.”
Prior to the keynote address, 2022 Chamber President Matt Wertheimer spoke, saying their goals for 2022 are to grow Chamber membership by 15, have 500 runners for the 2nd Bear Paw Marathon, increase their community presence by meeting at least once with every business, increase social media presence, have a shop local campaign every quarter, and help finish the Downtown Master Plan and begin implementing projects.
Those in attendance at the luncheon included Hill County Commissioners Jake Strissel and Mark Peterson, Havre Mayor Doug Kaercher, MSU-Northern Chancellor Greg Kegel, State Senator Russ Tempel, Havre Public Schools Superintendent Craig Mueller, and various business owners and other members of the public.
