Bodacious bodega-to-be: Partnership saving Walkerville building, envisions corner grocery

Not renovation. Not restoration.

“Rodney calls this project a ‘resurrection,’” said Clark Grant, a partner with Daniel Hogan in ClarDan LLC.

Rodney is Rodney Norman. A jack-of-all-trades, Norman has played a key role in saving a long-abandoned, weather-battered historic building in Walkerville that seemed destined to succumb to rack and ruin.

ClarDan is the partnership that launched the tilting-at-windmills campaign to both save the circa-1880 building and give proud Walkerville and its neighbors a corner grocery store.

“We’ve always thought we’d make it into a grocery store,” Grant said during an interview Wednesday at the building. “It was originally built as a general store.”

Records suggest that Joseph Broughton built the brick general store in 1880. By 1883, John Caplice and Alfred McCune acquired the building and, in 1884, “emblazoned Caplice & McCune high on the south wall,” according to Historic Montana.

After silver prices slumped in 1893, the building became a church and hosted different denominations for decades. And then came abandonment and neglect. A large portion of the roof collapsed, a reality that caused profound damage to the building’s interior.

Grant and Hogan bought the building on North Main Street in July 2017.

“We paid $27,000 for the building at that time, but it was facing imminent collapse due to the missing roof in the back third of the building,” Grant said. “For about five years before we bought it, the weather just punished the interior of the building, weakening the walls in the back end and destroying the floor structure in the back.”

That damage begat toil and trouble and heavy lifting.

“We started by rebuilding the brick parapet around the entire perimeter of the roof,” Grant said. “That involved removing thousands of bricks and cleaning the top of the wall to prepare for new brick to be laid. We then hiked 5,000 bricks up a staircase we made on the side of the building and spent an entire summer rebuilding the top of the walls.

“After that, we cleared 20 tons of rubble from the basement, detritus that had accumulated over decades of neglect,” Grant said.

Work to stabilize the structure included the construction of seismic shear walls, steel reinforcement of the original roof trusses and replacement of the roof system.

Were there moments of doubt about the project’s ultimate success?

“I must admit, I felt lost in the woods sometimes,” Grant said.

It’s been one foot in front of the other.

“At each phase we don’t really stop to celebrate. We just kind of move on to the next thing,” he said.

ClarDan has invested about $170,000 in the project since 2017, tapping a combination of grants, donations from friends and personal investment. Grant said the bulk of the grant funding has come from the Superfund Advisory and Redevelopment Trust Authority, or SARTA, along with other money from the Montana Department of Commerce and the Montana Department of Agriculture.

Among other things, SARTA supports projects that promote redevelopment of properties affected by past mining activities.

Grant and Hogan have ties to KBMF radio in Butte, which is how they met Norman, a machinist and longtime carpenter.

“Rodney is extremely generous with his time and is capable of fixing or building anything, be it masonry, metal, wood or motorized,” Grant said. “Without Rodney, we wouldn’t have gotten very far with this project.”

What work is left to complete?

Windows, doors, flooring, ceiling, plumbing, heating, electrical, the kitchen buildout, buying the store inventory, permitting with Butte-Silver Bow.

As planned, the 2,600-square-foot store will feature a commercial kitchen, cafe and a coffee roastery in addition to groceries.

Grant said the region has been in economic decline since Butte’s mining peaked during the last century.

“When every public space closes down, burns down or is boarded up, neighborhoods suffer,” he said. “We believe this kind of project can help restart the heart of Walkerville’s historic urban core, bringing new business to the town and giving the neighborhood a place to gather.

“We have a strong belief that it will work, and as we enter each new phase of the project, we have always found the right way to proceed,” Grant said. “The need for a grocery store in Walkerville is clear. We just have to build it the right way, and we know it will work out.

“We’d be thrilled if we could have the store open in the spring of 2025,” he said. “It has been an arduous journey, for sure. But we’re too far along to quit now.”

The Walkerville grocery store project will hold a fundraiser and community event Saturday, starting at 4 p.m., at the Knights of Columbus on West Park Street in Butte. A $15 donation will reap a burger prepared by chef Daniel Hogan and a side dish.

ClarDan LLC hopes to raise $5,000 to help pay for ongoing work.

Clark Grant acknowledged holding a fundraiser for a private endeavor is not especially common. “I know it’s kind of presumptuous, but the fact is we need money,” he said.