Billings Depot, riding high, rolls out new fundraiser

A week from Saturday, Billings Depot Inc. is throwing a black-tie Taste of Billings celebration that depot director Jennifer Mercer hopes will be “the most elegant, luxurious event Billings has ever seen.”

That’s quite a claim, and it’s all the more remarkable considering that the setting, the old Northern Pacific Railway Depot on Montana Avenue, was in wretched condition just 20 years ago, and had nearly been demolished 25 years ago.

The Taste of Billings—which will actually be a two-day affair, with a somewhat smaller soiree on Friday, Feb. 6, followed by the black-tie party on the 7th— is the latest in a series of fundraisers that have helped keep the depot going and growing since it came back from the brink in the mid-1990s.

The depot’s biggest fundraiser was the Horse of Course auction in 2002. Artists transformed life-size fiberglass equine statues into unique works of art, and the auction brought in nearly $350,000.

Other fundraisers included Depot Days events, a Polar Express party, the Trailhead Brew and Chew and a visit by Thomas the Train in 2009, the centennial of the depot’s completion. Mercer hopes the Taste of Billings event, after this inaugural affair, will become a twice-annual event, with one party in the winter and another in the summer.

The Friday event will feature food from a dozen of the city’s top restaurants, paired with wine and locally made microbrews, and with live music by The Wench. On Saturday, there will be a cocktail hour, followed by a succession of small plates created by some more top chefs. After that will be dancing to the Magic City Big Band, put together for this event. Professional ballroom dancers will be on hand to give demonstrations.

Mercer, who has been the director of the depot for the past 3½ years, said a lot of people still don’t know that the depot complex is a nonprofit, publicly owned enterprise, which is why fundraisers have always been so important. The complex includes four buildings and two parking lots, all of it stretching along 4½ blocks of Montana Avenue.

The depot was in pretty good shape until Amtrak ended passenger rail service on the southern line through Montana in 1979, a year after the depot was placed on the National Register of Historic Places. By 1981, a Gazette headline announced that “Wreckers ball looms for depot.”

It avoided that fate but fell into deeper disrepair until the early 1990s. At that point, members of the Billings Preservation Society, which had already restored the Mass Mansion, took on the depot as another historic preservation project.

Things were so bad then that proceeds from the first fundraising efforts were used to seal off access to the depot buildings, to keep transients and vandals out. Dennis Deppmeier, an architect who has been involved in the depot renovation almost from the beginning and still serves on the Billings Depot Inc. board, said most of the money was used to install “burglar bars” on the windows.

One hesitates to start naming other supporters, since there were so many of them, but one can’t omit Harry Gottwals, a banker who was one of the leaders of the planning effort that evolved into the Downtown Framework plan. On the side, Gottwals started working on the depot, too, and as Deppmeier said, “he became very instrumental in our ability to secure some of the larger grants.”

Those included $1.5 million in two appropriations secured by then-Sen. Conrad Burns, R-Mont., and a $500,000 grant from Phillip Morris, which the depot kept even though the tobacco company’s plans to sponsor a nationwide “Marlboro Train” promotion eventually fell apart.

The tobacco money was used to clean up the exterior and re-roof the complex, while the federal appropriations were used for extensive interior work, mostly in the seriously run-down passenger station.

Billings Depot Inc. came together in 1995. One very complicated, difficult aspect of the whole process was securing permission from the Burlington Northern Railroad and Montana Rail Link to use the buildings at all. It took a long time to arrange for the city of Billings to agree to be the nominal owner of most of the property, which was necessary if the depot was to apply for federal funding.

But the city put no money into the project and Billings Depot Inc. has been entirely responsible for managing and financing the operations. After years of renovations, the depot was opened to the public in 2000, for the first time in more than 20 years. Over time, the entire complex filled up.

Billings Depot Inc. leases out both of its parking lots, as well as the two buildings to the west of the passenger station. The old postal building is occupied by Better to Gather, which offers do-it-yourself arts-and-crafts sessions and also does special-events decorating. The old lunchroom, also known as the Beanery, is occupied by Trailhead Spirits, a distillery and bar.

An office building to the east of the depot, formerly used by BN, now houses the city’s Public Works Department. Thanks to the convoluted nature of the ownership and management arrangements at the depot complex, the only building actually owned by Billings Depot Inc. is the one leased to the city.

Gottwals, who ran the depot for many years on a small stipend before Mercer was finally hired as the first full-time director, said a local artist created a watercolor painting of the depot complex before any of the renovation began, just to show people what they were aiming for.

“Then, as it came together, it looked exactly like that rendition,” Gottwals said with some pride. “It was perfect.”

Mercer said that when she took over, the depot had no money in the bank, hosted few events and had a long list of deferred maintenance projects. She came up with a business plan that would make money for Billings Depot Inc. while making the public building accessible to the public.

“We’re trying to be affordable for the whole community, not just the elite,” she said.

The depot now plays host to about 125 events a year, including corporate parties, fundraisers by other nonprofit groups and lots of weddings.

“The thing that keeps our doors open is weddings,” she said.

The big space is the renovated baggage room on the east end of the building. It is 90 feet long and 42 feet wide and will accommodate slightly more than 300 people. The passenger station, on the west end, is 46 by 44 feet and can hold up to 150 people.

Proceeds from the Taste of Billings fundraiser will go toward repairing the original gutters on the depot buildings, a project that could cost more than $50,000, Mercer said.

Gottwals and Deppmeier had nothing but praise for Mercer, who they said has re-energized the depot and put it on a solid financial footing.

“She’s doing a super job,” Gottwals said. “She’s just a ball of fire.”

“When Jenn came on, she saw fairly quickly that this thing was really a gem in the rough,” Deppmeier said. “From the day she came on, we just gave her plenty of rein.”

Mercer, for her part, described Deppmeier as “the guardian of our building,” the one who checks every project for compliance with building codes and with historic preservation guidelines.

And as important as the depot is in its own right, Gottwals and Deppmeier agreed that its real importance is that it served as an example for the rest of the downtown, inspiring and encouraging first the renovation of Montana Avenue and then of the central business district.

Gottwals said he told people at the time, after shifting from the Downtown Framework to the depot, “What I want to do now is save this property down on Montana Avenue and make it a demonstration project for the downtown plan. If we keep it, it’ll make a huge difference in how quickly the downtown rejuvenation will occur.”

Deppmeier said much the same thing. As much pride as he takes in helping to preserve and restore the depot, he said, “I look at Montana Avenue in general. I look at how the depot complex was the focal point for reinvigorating that whole part of town… . I get more satisfaction from that.”

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