Plans to restore old building in downtown Pocatello moving forward

POCATELLO – An old historic building in ‘Old Town Pocatello’ is getting a facelift.

KPVI’s Deanne Coffin met with the owners of the building and the President of the Pocatello City Council about the future plans of the building.

Earlier this year the owners of the historic Monarch building in ‘Old Town Pocatello’ were given a deadline to provide a structural evaluation and a project timeline.

Now the deadline has been met and the owners have provided the requested information to the City of Pocatello.

Owners Ali Gorny and Tiffani Wilson, along with their architect, presented the overview for the project.

“For us it means we can take all the planning we’ve done and start putting it into action a little bit. We didn’t stop planning just because we couldn’t do certain things. We just kept planning and organizing and getting things ready and now we’re excited to really take charge of that,” says Monarch Building Co-owner, Ali Gorny.

Ali and Tiffani presented a 60 page structural evaluation to the City of Pocatello on Thursday which cost around $10 thousand dollars. Now that they’ve met their deadline for the current structural report and the project timeline, now it’s on to the next phase which is a temporary bracing and design which is estimated to cost about $100 thousand dollars.

“I was impressed with the detail and the frank honesty in terms of what has to be done to make that project complete,” says Jim Johnston, President Pocatello City Council.

Pocatello City Council President Jim Johnston says their ideas are unique, especially when it comes to building security.

The owners plan to restore the façade to its original state and make the building earthquake proof.

“For the community it means that, well one of the buildings that everyone loves gets to stay here and they also get to have an opportunity to have a butterfly exhibit in the future,” says Tiffani Wilson, Monarch Building Co-owner.

The owners still plan to turn the building into a boutique hotel with the Monarch Butterfly exhibit and a pedestrian tunnel for people to walk through during construction, which they say could start in the next few months.

This article was first published by KPVI. It is used here with permission.