Renovation Of Bigfork City Hall Is Complete

“It’s just a really historic piece to the community and to have it totally restored it means a lot,” Bigfork City Clerk Treasurer Angie Storlie said.

The whole process to restore Bigfork City Hall took about 8 years to complete and cost around $900,000. Michael Kocian, chairman of the Bigfork Improvement Group, has been part of the restoration process since the first public meeting back in 2011.

“It needed a lot of work,” Kocian said. “The roof leaked, the walls in the basement leaked, the heating system was terribly inefficient and old and needed work.”

Bigfork Village Hall was built in 1936 and is now placed on the National Register of Historic Places, and the similarities between how it looked back then and now is uncanny.

“Our goal was to make it as historical as possible and get it back to that but make it useful for the modern age,” Kocian said.

He said a lot of upgrades were made, from adding stainless steel kitchen appliances in the basement to changing the tile floors to their original form.

“This flooring matches what it was in 1936, the same birch flooring actually from the same company,” Kocian said. “The windows are matched to the windows that were here in 1936, the doors, the exteriors everything.”

Kocian said the restoration of City Hall is a source of pride for the community.

“It’s a gift that we were given from past generation and it’s a gift that we can extend to future generations in years to come because it is a great building,” Kocian said.

Some of the funding to restore the building came from grants through the Minnesota Historical Society and the Blandin Foundation. Bigfork City Hall is having an open house Saturday, June 8th at 2 PM.