HELENA — A new brewery and more are hoping to breathe new life into the old Independent Record building in downtown Helena.
317 Cruse Partners purchased the building earlier this year with the intent of rejuvenating the half-century-old building into a mixed office and retail business space called “The Independent.”
“It’s going to be a mixed use building,” explained Ben Tintinger with 317 Cruse Partners. “It’ll have a brewery on the first floor and the rooftop, space for a restaurant and potential a coffee shop as well.”
The Ascension Brewery is already slated to go into the building, and hope to be up and running by summer 2021.
The patio on the roof will overlook downtown and provide views of Mt. helena, the Sleeping Giant, the Cathedral of St. Helena and Carroll College just to name a few.
Tintinger says it took some thinking on how to connect the first floor brewery with the third floor patio while still following Montana’s brewery laws, but they’re pretty sure they’ve come up with a solution.
The second floor of the building will eventually house Mosaic Architecture and The Sidecar: A Coworking Community.
Tintinger is a founder of Mosaic Architecture and current principal architect; however he assured MTN that the project wasn’t just an elaborate ploy to work in the same building as brewery.
“We’re partial to all the breweries in town,” quipped Tintinger. “Hopefully this is just a good addition to the mix of downtown Helena.”
A Helena native, Tintinger says he’s proud to help bring some more vibrancy to downtown.
“For me it’s to see Helena revitalized,” explained Tintinger. “For businesses to stay downtown and people live downtown, and have a good mix of businesses and residential properties. They make downtown sing.
The cost of reshaping the old newspaper building is priced at around $6 million. 317 Partners are already in preliminary approval for federal tax credits to help offset some of the costs.
