If you build it, they will come: Renovations of the landmark Hirvi Building in downtown Chiloquin caps a host of rebuilding efforts aimed at a revival of the former logging town
If you drive down Chiloquin’s downtown these days, you can’t help but see the promise of a new day for the downtown area. Driving into town, one cannot help but notice the Hirvi Building, a downtown landmark built circa 1926, is undergoing a complete renovation with four new retail sites and six offices in the back.
The beleaguered building has gotten a new lease on life thanks to Hannah Levine, the project developer, and Cathy Stuhr, the grant manager. Levine bought the property a few years back, hoping to resurrect it. She received a $200,000 Oregon Main Street grant to help fund the rehab of the building.
Home to a variety of functions over the years, the property sat vacant for the last two decades, but thanks to a retrofit that helped the property withstand time, neglect, and the occasional earthquake, the condition of the structure allowed the designers to keep the main structure intact and retrofit the property with what Levine hopes will be space for new businesses that promise to bring new jobs to the downtown area of Chiloquin.
Older residents recall the Hirvi Building’s history as a department store, a grocery market, a bank, and a Christian bookstore.
“It has been a Safeway. It was a Golden Rule, (the precursor to JC Penney), and I believe, a tribal office,” Levine said. “I think the US Bank was on the corner at one point. So, it’s been a lot of different things over the years. And I think it’s been fun to hear some folks who have lived here for a long time talk about how they remember a candy store, a place they could go get candy here, and coming into the Hirvi Building, or going to the bank, the US Bank, when it was still here. So, it’s got a long, a long history in town, but it’s been empty for a long time.”
Levine said she has received great attention from business owners looking to expand into the new space. She said even a member of her household has received a job from one of the businesses slated to take occupancy when it comes online early next year.
Levine believes the new businesses will likely bring more foot traffic to the downtown area. “We’ve got a little bit of everything,” she said. “We’ve got people who are currently running a business in Chiloquin out of their garage and need more space to expand and haven’t had a space in Chiloquin that they could put their business in and didn’t want to move it elsewhere. So, it gives them an opportunity to stay in Chiloquin.
“We’ve got a restaurant, a guy who’s always dreamed of opening a restaurant, who’s looking to go into retail #4 here and open a restaurant, and kind of a chance to fulfill a life wondering. And if you talk to anybody that lives in Chiloquin, the number one thing is always food. We need food. Yes, more food. So, yeah, so that’s a good start. And then I think there’s a lot of people who are working from home or working remotely, that maybe need to get out of the house, and who have inquired about office space. We’ve had folks who do massage therapy and acupuncture and those types of services who have inquired about looking for office space.”
Levine is part of a growing community of people taking advantage of Chiloquin’s wild landscape and remote nature to build lives. Over the years, Levine said she would drive down to Klamath Falls just to get a chance to see other people, but she worked at first in a trailer, then in a storage container before she began the rebuilding efforts downtown. She admits she will not occupy any of the spaces in her building but looks forward to seeing what comes to life in the new space. “It’s a small community, but there’s also not much going on out here as far as resources and amenities for folks who live out here,” she said. “And as somebody who lived here for six years, there’s lots of things that I wish were closer here and that I didn’t have to drive to Klamath.”
Stuhr helped Levine secure the grant funding to rehab the property but says the Hirvi Building is just the start. Stuhr also helped obtain brownfield funding to take down the old Marquardt Building directly across the street from the Hirvi Building and said the plan for that site would nicely complement the newly arrived businesses in the Hirvi Building.
“We tried to save the building, but it was in really bad shape,” Stuhr said. “The flooring, structurally, was going to cost twice as much to save the building as it was to take it down. We had a grant, so we addressed things like underground storage tanks, hydraulic lifts. There was some PCB in the oil associated with that, some lead-based paint in the soil, and then these underground fuel storage tanks. So, we started that work in July, and finished it mid-August, and got it put back together. EPA has something out right now. It closes in November, called the EPA community change grant. It’s an opportunity for disadvantaged communities to do transformative projects.”
Stuhr explained that a project must cost between $10 and $20 million to be eligible for the grant. The current plan includes rebuilding the building to look a lot like it did before, as a 10,000-square-foot new City Hall and municipal center, with new services for citizens and a Community Center, where It will also be able to serve as an event space, and will function as what they’re calling now a community resilience hub in an emergency. It will shelter people if it’s hot. It can be a warming shelter, a cooling shelter, or a shelter for bad air quality days. It will have specialized air handling systems that provide clean air. “The idea here is to focus this particular center on the elderly and disabled with cots and things that are of greater size, and they’re adjustable and comfier; there will be a medical room in there,” she said.
Stuhr added that the facility can operate daily as a municipal center, allowing City Hall to move out of its tiny, cramped space. The event space, with a small patio and a parking area, can generate income by hosting weddings and other events.
“The grant has been submitted,” Stuhr said. “I Feel really good about it. We partnered with Chiloquin Visions in Progress and the Klamath Lake long-term recovery group. The Klamath Tribes are participating as well, and the Oregon Institute of Technology is a part of it. There’s a whole programmatic element.”
Stuhr and Levine said the building development is the beginning of a revival of the downtown area that will bring new businesses and foot traffic to Chiloquin.
Robert Cowie, executive director of Chiloquin Visions in Progress and a City Council member, said the downtown building is exciting. He said it’s all happening just in time for the city’s centennial celebration in 2026.
He agrees with Stuhr that an emergency shelter is needed. “We don’t have (an emergency shelter) because even here, we could open this up, but there’s no showers,” he said. “There’s not a large enough cooking area and everything.” He added that the new facility will provide all the emergency needs for residents, saying, “This would provide the facility for, again, where there’s just a simple event like we experienced last year, when the power went out, and people needed a place to go, this would provide that. If there’s a railroad accident and you can’t get over to the tribal fitness center, which is also an emergency shelter. But it’s not big enough to handle everything, right? So, between these two, we’re going to be in very good shape now to handle the need. Whether it’s again an earthquake, a train wreck, a flood, or whatever the case, we’ll be totally prepared.”
Levine thinks about the new growth more pragmatically, saying, “You know, if we have more businesses here, we’ve got more local work opportunities and people. People don’t have to commute as far to get to work.’ She envisions a bustling downtown in the future, with area workers coming downtown for lunch. We’ve got Jeld Wen down the road. So, what a cool opportunity for Jeld Wen employees to pop in to come get lunch if there’s a restaurant here. Yeah, we got a pretty cool little downtown coming together.”
Both Levine and Stuhr stressed that they are working to bring the resources to Chiloquin that will not change the town’s nature. They said there is no plan to make Chiloquin into a “Sisters or Bend” but rather keep the small hometown appeal for which Chiloquin is known. But Levine admits Chiloquin could use a few new resources. “I think the future of Chiloquin is not having to go into Klamath for everything,” she said. “Eventually having additional medical services out here, maybe someday we could get a bank to come back out here.
“We’ve tried. We haven’t had any luck just yet. You know, more diversity in grocery options, more fresh foods available out here, or at least, maybe more of a platform for our local growers to sell their produce and meat and that type of things. And we’ve got our laundromat; we’ve got our community center; we’ve got our library; we’ve got our hardware store; we’ve got our grocery store. I think we just keep expanding from there to all the things that we need as functioning humans on a weekly basis and bring it closer to home.”
Cowie aims to do just that and outlined several projects to make Chiloquin the center of what’s happening in small-town America. “I had the privilege to attend Business Oregon’s infrastructure summit a few weeks ago up in Portland, and one of the things that shocked me was at three different sessions,” he said. “Chiloquin was talked about. There we are, one of the smallest towns in Oregon, one of the poorest towns in Oregon, and yet here we’re being talked about and shown as examples of what others can do.”
Cowie explained that through grant writing and constant vigilance, city officials have been busy preparing applications for many projects to update the downtown area. “Chiloquin is in a position like so many cities in Oregon,” he said. “If we don’t have the funds to do these things unless we get grants, we can’t do it. One of the things we have to be on the lookout for is when a grant opens up that is possible for the city to apply for. Is it relevant for us? Can we go after those dollars, and then if we do get those grants, as we’re getting them now, we can have the dollars to execute?”
From new sidewalks working with the DOT that run all the way out from Dollar General to downtown to a new city well and wastewater treatment facility, Chiloquin’s rebuild includes everything the city needs to welcome new residents and businesses in the next century. Cowie said residents can get a rundown on all the city projects by attending the city council meetings and the Chiloquin Connect meeting on Nov. 14.
Asked about the future of Chiloquin and how residents can have their say, Cowie said, “One of the things I think is also going to be a good opportunity to address (the future) is next month, in November, another grant that the city won, again, through the EPA, is what’s called ‘building blocks.’ It is a technical assistance grant, so we’ll be having a very large workshop here in November with community leaders, state agencies, federal agencies, and there’ll be an opportunity for the community to come hear what’s going on, to provide their feedback.” He added that this is the chance for residents to be heard on what Chiloquin needs. “They can join the workshop if they want, as this talk will literally be about what is in the future for Chiloquin,” he said. “How do we continue to grow and bring in new housing? What else is needed? How do we recover the economy? What else can we do?”
