In the fall of 2022 Margarit and I met up with Chris and Connie and we visited the Greenhill Hotel in Blairmore for the Beer Parlour Project. This was the second stop of our ongoing tour of old small town hotels and taverns. We refer to that visit as BP2.0. It was a bit of a bust because there was just not much going on. The staff was not very friendly, and there were hardly any patrons around. Fast forward to a year later, almost to the day, September 16th to be precise, and we are back for a return visit. This time around we refer to the current visit a BP2.1. The property has changed hands and the new owners, Mike and Tina, are much more receptive. The place was really happening this time, and was full of people.
We met Margaret... not to be confused with my wife Margarit... who visited with us for a while and told us that she met her late husband in the Greenhill Tavern when he worked there. She told us that she snuck in to the tavern underage, and her future husband allowed her to ge away with it. She allowed me to take her portrait with my big camera and I will be posting that image in the future, when the film is developed. Margaret was having a great time visiting with everyone, including her daughter Kelly who was there with her.
We got permission to tour the back rooms of the hotel, and even the basement. Rachel, who was tending the bar was kept hopping as there were a lot of people out on a Saturday night, plus our project getting in her way. But she did a fantastic job.
We hung around until late in the evening and then eventually packed up all of our gear and walked back up the street to he Cosmopolitan Hotel where we were staying. The Greenhill no longer rents rooms, so it was not an option for us to stay there.
On Sunday the 17th we returned and had a chance to meet with Mike and Tina, the new owners. They were in the process of renovating all of the original hotel rooms into apartments for long term rental. We got a tour of the space and it looks like it will be a fantastic property when all is said and done. Chris took advantage of the quieter time to interview Mya, a long term Crownest Pass resident, plus Mike and Tina, as well as Rachel. The notes from these interviews will be used to create the written component of our project, in the future.
I managed to take a number of photographs of the exterior of the building in evening light. It is a majestic old property and the two spiral staircase fire escapes are very unique. The building permit morons are trying to get Mike to remove these but he refuses. He will block them off so that they can not be used, but insists that they have to stay... and I certainly agree with him
As Mike toured us through the hotel he explained all of the work that he was undertaking. He told us that there were nine layers of asphalt shingles on the roof, totalling over two inches in thickness. Common roofing practice calls for old shingles to be removed prior to installation of new ones. But sometimes the low bidder cuts corners and just puts the new ones on over top. Once that has been done once or twice, no one wants to go to the work of removing all that old material.
There will certainly be no issues with the structure of the century old building standing up to design loads now that all that weight has been removed...!
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